Also:
- optimized geospatial foundation models w/OxCaml
- Live coding environments for teaching
- Crazy time-travelling shells
- Agentic software vigilantes
It just doesn't stop...
This is a fairly wild post about OxCaml Labs from
@avsm
. It's hard to summarize the stuff they're doing, but, some examples:
- Some wild vibecoding
- A formal semantics for package managers
- A decade of docker containers (including OxCaml!?!)
anil.recoil.org/projects/oxc...
There's this...
GitHub - janestreet/ppx_type_directed_value: Get [@@deriving]-style generation of type-directed values without writing a ppx · GitHub share.google/Q16s8YA9j0Rn...
In office, New York and London would both work.
If you're interested in hearing from someone who has this job now, I got to interview James Somers on Signals and Threads some time back:
signalsandthreads.com/writing-tech...
Another fun hiring spot at Jane Street: we're looking to hire some great hybrid writers-and-engineers. As we grow and do more, communication becomes ever more important, for both internal and external audiences.
www.janestreet.com/join-jane-st...
Anyway, it was a great conversation. (and maybe our longest episode yet?) I hope you enjoy!
It was a really fun epsiode to record! Will is incredibly sharp and we had a really wide-ranging conversation, from the CAP theorem to the Lyappunov exponent of the Linux kernel (which is really a lot higher than I would have guessed) to the history of property based testing.
It's been a minute, but, time for another Signals and Threads, this one with Will Wilson about the testing tools he's building at
@antithesis.com.
And, in a bow to modernity, we have a video version of this one too!
youtu.be/F_LvzcdNH3Q?...
A poor craftsman blames his tools. Wealthy craftsmen also blame their tools. Lots of tool-blaming going around.
Using Base and our PPXs, it looks like this. Still more verbose than would be ideal, but avoids polymorphic compare, which is an anti-pattern.
blog.janestreet.com/the-perils-o...
Anyway, fast deflation is pretty weird in monetary contexts. I really wonder what it would do to software engineering.
I wonder if we're starting to hit a deflationary era in software engineering. For the first time, we're starting to talk about this in a planning context; it can make sense to put off some projects because we expect they'll be easier to achieve in the future than today.
I wonder if we're starting to hit a deflationary era in software engineering. For the first time, we're starting to talk about this in a planning context; it can make sense to put off some projects because we expect they'll be easier to achieve in the future than today.
I wonder if we're starting to hit a deflationary era in software engineering. For the first time, we're starting to talk about this in a planning context; it can make sense to put off some projects because we expect they'll be easier to achieve in the future than today.
I wonder if we're starting to hit a deflationary era in software engineering. For the first time, we're starting to talk about this in a planning context; it can make sense to put off some projects because we expect they'll be easier to achieve in the future than today.
I wonder if we're starting to hit a deflationary era in software engineering. For the first time, we're starting to talk about this in a planning context; it can make sense to put off some projects because we expect they'll be easier to achieve in the future than today.
Seems like a good time as any to say I'm:
(1) moving to New York next week, where I'll:
(2) be writing OxCaml at Jane Street!
Excited to start the next thing :)
February 10th, and thus the inaugural edition of NINeS is just around the corner. You can participate from anywhere in the world, at times that are convenient to you. See https://nines-conference.org/attend for information on how you can participate. We hope to see you on Feb 10th!
My regular PSA that if you enjoy working on developer tools, then Jane Street is kind of an amazing place. Apply here! There's no special posting, so just apply for the Software Engineering role, and express your interests in dev-tools in a note.
janestreet.com/apply
So, if you're an experienced educator who loves working with new type-system ideas, apply! I think this is a really unusual and high-impact opportunity to combine those two passions.
My hope and expectation is that approaching this with an educational lense will influence not just how we teach, but also the design of our tools, our libraries, and the language itself.
You can actually see some of the great work from that group on Rust, in a talk Will recently gave at Jane Street:
www.janestreet.com/tech-talks/r...
We're hoping to work more with Greg as well as @shriram.bsky.social and @tonofcrates.bsky.social at Brown, and that some of their insights of thinking about how well designed tools and documentation can help people make the key conceptual leaps.
The last couple of weeks have given us a sense of the scale of the challenges here! It was awesome having Gavin Gray, who came to the systems with fresh eyes, driving a tutorial on OxCaml at ICFP.
conf.researchr.org/details/icfp...
And more about OxCaml itself on oxcaml.org, where you can see some of our efforts to make this stuff easier to understand. There's a pile of documentation, including a tutorial on data-race free programming in OxCaml:
oxcaml.org/documentatio...
You can find the job postings here, for both NY and London:
www.janestreet.com/join-jane-st...
www.janestreet.com/join-jane-st...
We've had an exciting couple of weeks full of opportunities to teach people about the exciting (and mildly bewildering) features of OxCaml.
And...we're looking to hire an experienced educator to help us in this work. Please share this with anyone you think might be a good fit!
And please share with anyonhe else you think might be interested!
