[yminsky]

Understandable how you'd get that impression, but it's off the mark. We do lots of "ordinary" programming that looks nothing like waiting a compiler. Data analysis, high performance packet processing, log analysis, UI work, you name it.

We use OCaml as a general purpose tool, and it really excels in that role.

[darksaints]

Interesting. I've always wanted to dig deeper into OCaml but haven't really had the chance to do so yet. I really enjoy a lot of what I've read about your work with OCaml and it looks like a great place to work for someone like me (4 years of automated trading experience in futures markets and a love of strongly-typed functional programming), but alas I'm not in a position to relocate from Seattle.

[pbiggar]

I think the disconnect here is that for much of the world these days, "ordinary" programming is a backend for a web or mobile app, using REST (or maybe GraphQL if you're avant garde). I'm sure Jane Street does lots of web stuff too, but I haven't see a bunch of Core libraries to do, for example, a CRUD app on Postgres in the cloud somewhere.

[zeckalpha]

Hmm. All programs are either compilers or repls.

Log analysis compiles logs into an analysis. A GUI repls user interactions.

It all has to do with how you define the abstractions.