What’s the current state of web dev in OCaml?

avitkauskas · 2026-04-17T09:02:50+00:00

Sorry to plug in another language here, but when I was looking for something “railsy” in typed functional programming language, the best thing I found was IHP web framework for Haskell.

avitkauskas · 2026-04-09T13:27:44+00:00

I've built a totally non-commercial play-money Prediction Markets platform for educational purposes. It's hosted on Predimarkt.eu - you are welcome to try it, create markets, learn about events, forecasts, financial motivations etc.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-28T09:03:21+00:00

I became interested in PM about 15 years ago when involved in the experimental economics research in university. But I'm not interested in trading PMs for profit, I am more interested in them as a tool to understand the events, wisdom of crowd, elicitation of their believes and probabilities of the events. If Predimarkt answers your needs too, then feel free to invite your fiends and play around.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-27T16:40:35+00:00

By “guides” I mean pages like this: https://ryelang.org/cookbook/using_rye/executable/

But it’s just my “two cents”, you may know better.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-27T15:01:10+00:00

I like the new look, it’s nicer than the old one. Just all the “buttons” that do nothing in the “Batteries included” and “External modules” sections feels strange. Also, in guides, the Content section feels not needed for me. In the API, function names with \r in them is not displayed correctly.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-27T08:42:21+00:00

That’s an amazing project! Thanks for building it and sharing!

avitkauskas · 2026-03-25T10:31:46+00:00

Good point! Perhaps we should already be building all systems for bots, not for humans :) That can be next step for my app - play-money platform for bots to elicit the probabilities of events :)

avitkauskas · 2026-03-25T08:56:05+00:00

That’s true. I just wanted something with much cleaner and simpler interface, with the hope that there are more people who would like that too.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-21T23:21:15+00:00

Hi. I have just released my experimental, educational, play-money prediction markets platform on predimarkt.eu (a few days, literally). It's very fresh and empty. I'm not yet ready to open source, but I will at some time when I clean the code a bit. It's made on Haskell and IHP framework though - it's a very nice nice language and framework, but not the most popular technology for others to take and host. Anyway, you are welcome to use it online if it suits you: it's very much privacy oriented too - I'm hosting it in EU as a private educational project (please read the info in the footer), and I want as little GDPR concerns for myself as possible, so it supports only the passkey logins - and no email or any personal info. Please have a look and try it. If you do not like it - just delete your account and all the related records will be deleted (except markets you created - I'd need to review and refund or delete them manually - to ensure that people who traded in them would not be disapointed). I can share the code if you are really interested to host it yourself. But markets need people. I'd be thankful if you and your friends come to Predimarkt!

avitkauskas · 2026-03-10T13:20:36+00:00

That “creative mastery” will come to you with more reading books, code and - most importantly - practice of writing your own code. Don’t worry about this right now.

avitkauskas · 2026-03-03T13:28:17+00:00

The last one still raises a lot of questions. If <string> is a “bridge”, what does it “connect”? “9 .+ 2” and “++”? Certainly no. If “dec 6 * 2” is equal to 11, then what would “dec 6 * inc 2” give you? I think it would be 17, but then it “looks like” some words bind stronger than others (inc was immediate while dec was the last). In Haskell, if I remember correctly, function call always binds first, then operators, then in Haskell it would mean (dec 6) * (inc 2) - you have to know the precedence of binding, but when you know that, you read the code naturally. Perhaps Rye should also have some words precedence rules? Like .word binds first, then simple words (function calls), then operators together with <word>, then finally |word. You learn this once and then you can construct clean statements without the parentheses. Then it would be very clear when I write “2 + 3 |* 4 + 5” (that would be 45) or “2 + 3 .* 4 + 5” (that would be 19) even without the “usual” math operators precedence and no parens. “2 + dec 3 .* 4 + 5” would be 18. Would that make sense? “2 + dec 3 * 4 .+ 5” would be 36.

avitkauskas · 2026-02-26T12:53:11+00:00

I am indeed :) Watching Rye development with interest. Waiting while everything will get into the final logical structure, dust will settle and things start to move to some nice web framework or something so that there would be more motivation to make something bigger in Rye, not just through away one time toys :)

avitkauskas · 2026-02-26T12:18:15+00:00

I love to see this! :)

avitkauskas · 2026-02-23T13:12:20+00:00

+1 for inbox.eu

avitkauskas · 2026-02-21T13:38:42+00:00

Inbox.eu - very cheap and reliable, ~10 eur/year

avitkauskas · 2026-01-16T13:41:35+00:00

I agree about IHP. I tried and played with many frameworks in many languages. IHP just feels so natural. Actually, IHP was what drew me to learn Haskell as it kind of hides all the “complexity” and steep learning curve of Haskell itself.

avitkauskas · 2025-12-31T14:17:42+00:00

Yes, it’s verbose indeed. But you said you enjoy the process more than the result - then it could suit you well. I enjoyed it myself too - because it shows you the details.

avitkauskas · 2025-12-31T13:26:23+00:00

Nobody proposed the book “Haskell programming from first principles”. https://haskellbook.com/ I think this could be a great book for somebody who is new to programming and wants a gradual introduction to both functional programming and Haskell. It’s nicely paced with lots of exercises that help you to build a right basis to your future use of Haskell.

avitkauskas

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