At Tarides, we’ve been working on an initiative to improve the OCaml development experience: Dune Package Management. As outlined in the Platform Roadmap, which was created through community collaboration, the aim is to unify all OCaml development workflows under a single, streamlined tool. After successfully completing a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) in Q1 2024, Dune will be the recommended tool for all OCaml development. The motivation behind Dune Package Management is c...

The Dune team is excited to announce the arrival of Dune Developer Preview, an experimental nightly release of Dune created to test improvements, including the new package management feature. This is a major milestone for OCaml development! We've been working hard improving Dune, and we're excited to introduce this new way to ease OCaml workflows. If you are an OCaml developer, this is the time to explore the future of package management and development yourself. Our prog...

Effective documentation is a cornerstone of software development. It helps developers understand how to use a language, its libraries, and its tooling, which leads to more robust and maintainable code. When it comes to OCaml, odoc is the wizard behind the scenes, ensuring developers not only understand OCaml's quirks but also become familiar with its libraries and tools. odoc powers the OCaml.org package documentation, so it's used widely by the entire OCaml community. odoc is a documentation ge...

Tarides is conducting a survey targeting non-OCaml programmers to learn their thoughts about this functional programming language and uncover any misconceptions surrounding it. Please take a few mintues to fill it out if you haven't yet done so. This post shows our preliminary findings based on a relatively small sample size within the Twitter community. The survey aimed to shed light on the challenges hindering its broader acceptance among programmers unfamiliar with its ecosystem and principle...

OCaml is a statically-typed programming language that emphasizes readability, programmer efficiency, and semantic clarity. This powerful and efficient language has been gaining popularity among developers. The growing adoption of OCaml is because it's fast, type safe, and secure. It can be used in industries where performance and security matter, like IoT, Data Analytics, or financial services.

Tarides provides support and development services for OCaml tools, packages, and libraries for our commercial partners and for the benefit of the entire OCaml community. We focus on groundbreaking innovation, feature development, and crucial maintenance of OCaml-based projects. One of these projects is called Merlin, an advanced Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

We are thrilled to announce a partnership between Tarides and Hyper, a technology provider in the agritech space who’s building an "operating system for high-performing farms." Indoor and vertical farms are becoming tech businesses that require scalable, flexible, and easy-to-use tools to facilitate data analysis and thereby increase productivity. According to the State of Indoor Farming 2020 Report, “40% of vertical and indoor farms are implementing data analytics and control automation to incr

Irmin is an open-source distributed, version-controlled storage system, most similar to a Git-like database. In the simplest terms, Irmin is an OCaml library that can be embedded into application code for the purpose of storing data.

In April, we announced that the DAPSI initiative accepted the proposal for our Secure-by-Design Communication Protocols (SCoP) project. Today, we are thrilled to announce that SCoP has passed the initiative’s Phase 1, and we are now on our way to Phase 2! SCoP is an open, secure, and resource-efficient infrastructure to engineer a modern basis for open messaging (for existing and emerging protocols) using type-safe languages and unikernels—to ensure your private information remains secure. Afte

Irmin is an OCaml library for building mergeable, branchable distributed data stores. You can choose the way you store information with this open-source database, originally written for use by MirageOS unikernels. Whether it’s in-memory or on your hard disk, you can choose where to store your data. With its built-in snapshotting and git compatibility, you can ensure it’s safe and recoverable in the event of a crash. Plus, you can customize data types and run it on Linux or web browsers, among ot

Canonical Ltd. provides a container system similar to the popular Docker, but it can do so much more. For instance, it can run multiple processes inside the same container simultaneously, whereas Docker can only run one at a time. LXD (pronounced Lex-Dee) is an image-based system that enables the user to create a container from a pre-existing Linux image from one of its remote image servers, which reduces your workload considerably. The user feels as if they’re running an OS inside the container

In my last post, I took you through how to set up Gatsby with some tips on navigating some snags in their tutorial. Today, we’re going to look at an easier way to create a Gatsby site, especially if you have only basic knowledge of HTML / CSS / JS. We’ll also look at a very simple language called Markup to edit your content and some simple styling.

It appears that many companies are now hosting their technical documentation on static sites made through services like Jekyll and Gatsby, so as a technical writer, it’s beneficial to learn how to use these tools. Whereas the static site generator Jekyll is built on Ruby, Gatsby is built on React, which is a JavaScript library full of self-contained components. In short, React is a collection of really cool pre-coded things to help you build a working site more quickly.

If you’re in your 20s or even 30s, sitting on the couch hunched over your laptop might be a comfortable way to work; however after working like that for ten years, you’ll likely find your back has become weak and rounded, your head craned perpetually forward, and the nerves in your arms, wrists, or hands often in pain. After 15 years of computer work, I lost the ability to use a mouse without significant pain. I switched to a trackpad, which I can use with either hand, but after another decade, that can be painful as well. Nerve and tendon damage from 25 years of repetitive motion has caused a Repetitive Motion Injury (RMI), also referred to a Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI).

It wasn’t until I was walking along the streets of Lewes last weekend that I realized not everyone who has an iPhone knows the really cool ways you can use it when traveling. This revelation came to me when my tech­savvy friend was looking down at her GPS, as we had already taken a wrong turn out of the train station, and exclaimed, “Look! This shows us how to get there in real time!”

At least several times a week, I get calls asking for help transferring files from one computer to another. This usually happens when someone gets a new computer, and they want to transfer files from their old computer. Apple has created such a simple way to do this, and it's built right into OS X. It's called Migration Assistant. You can find Migration Assistant in your Applications folder (Applications > Utilities > Migration Assistant). The best and simplest way to transfer data from one machine to another is from a Time Machine backup.

It was the singular greatest moment I’ve ever experienced in my entire work history (WARNING: I’m prone to hyperbole). Yesterday afternoon, I was writing website copy at my workstation when I distinctly heard someone say the words “Doctor” and “Dalek.” My ears perked up, and it took every ounce of self control not to beam directly across the office. Instead, I took the mundane way in this muggle environment and walked over there, albeit quickly.] “Did I hear someone say Dalek?” I asked. Sure enough, they were talking about Doctor Who, one of the greatest television shows of all time. As any Whovian knows, The Doctor travels through time and space in something called the T.A.R.D.I.S. (Time And Relative Dimension in Space). It's a time machine on steroids; a living, sentient machine (like Skynet, only it serves to save humanity, not destroy it).

As we slide further into the 21st century, technology continues to progress at impressive rates. Yesterday I saw a meme on Facebook that cleverly showed the technological progress from science fiction to reality. Using images from Star Trek over the past 40 years, it effectively illustrated how fantasized technology has become part of our everyday life. In the 1987 TV show Star Trek, The Next Generation, Captain Picard held a thin piece of glass on which he read transmissions from other crew members as well as essential facts and figures needed to command the USS Enterprise. Today, we have the iPad and iPad mini on which we can do everything from read the news to write a news article. We can even produce music and movies, right from a thin piece of glass in our hands. Examples of how technology has changed our lives and fulfilled fanciful imaginings are endless.

You’ve got your to-go coffee cup in hand, lunch bag, and work attaché, ready for another productive day at the office. Your adorable furry friend is sleeping soundly on the couch. After tiptoeing past him, you gently pick up your keys, but they make the slightest jingle. Oh no. You stop short in your loafers and hold your breath. Slowly you turn. Sure enough. As if he beamed from the sofa directly to the front door, your dog is now at your feet. Those big, sad, brown eyes, brimming with tears, shoot into your soul like a icy arrow of guilt. He knows what the keys mean. You’re leaving. Without him. Forever. At least that’s what he thinks.

A couple of weeks ago, a customer called in with a technical problem: his iMac wouldn’t stay asleep. Computers are temperamental. If I’ve learned anything in the past twenty years working with technology, it’s that. Software that works fine on 99% of machines, won’t work on another. Same OS. Same configs. Same everything, really. This iMac wasn’t only temperamental, the poor thing was an insomniMac. It must’ve been exhausted! Never sleeping. Working continuously. I felt for the poor iMac and its frustrated user.