HN is currently obsessed with Rust vs Zig. OxCaml should be considered as an alternative to both. The argument for Rust is safety, while for Zig it's ergonomics, but OxCaml shows you can have safety and ergonomics together. In my little tinkering with it [1] I found it really easy to use.
[1]: https://noelwelsh.com/posts/a-quick-introduction-to-oxcaml/
OxCaml is more of a competitor to Go, JS/Typescript or the Java/.NET ecosystems than these two other languages. It's also a temporary effort that's ultimately intended to feed into upstream Ocaml.
I think that’s not true; vanilla OCaml is already a competitor to Go, etc. OxCaml is explicitly an effort to compete more with Rust (the “Ox” in the name is to evoke “oxidizing” = rusting)
> the “Ox” in the name is to evoke “oxidizing”
Hah, I was reading it as `0x`, a common prefix indicating hexadecimal, though I can't say my brain made any leap as to why "0xCAML" would be any more hex than standard.
Agreed with this. OxCaml still requires a runtime, so it's not suitable for some applications, like embedded systems, where e.g. Rust can be used. But it certainly can be used for many of the same applications. E.g. Bun, which has been on the home page recently, could easily be written in OxCaml.
Only for GC haters.
For the rest of us, languages with automatic resource management are perfectly usable in systems programming.
Xerox already proved that with Cedar on the Dorado, and Interlisp-D, as did many others since then.
http://toastytech.com/guis/cedar.html
https://interlisp.org/
Unfortunately those attempts end up failing due to human reasons, not technical ones.