David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 26/07/2026“Daddy, your code is amazing” - inspiring future generations (in Scratch 🫣🤫🤐) 040
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 06/07/2026Hopelessly nerd-sniped by github.com/ocaml/ocaml/... … continuing a fine Jane Street tradition of surfacing kernel bugs using OCaml - just not in our usual kernel!github.comOCaml 5.5.0 build failure on Windows · Issue #14871 · ocaml/ocamlThe attempt to upgrade my Windows OCaml installation to 5.5.0 keeps failing, please see the following log. The path C:\\Users\\me\\AppData\\Local\\opam\\default\\lib\\toplevel:stdlib.cmi that it tr... 030
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 15/03/2026Doing some clearing out - do these belong in recycling… or in a museum? 😂🤔 011
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 10/03/2026Seeing the news of Moltbook’s “acquisition” is somehow making me want to (re-)watch Memento 🤔 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 06/02/2026_Great_ Northern; _Great_er Anglia; _Great_ Western Railway; Thames_link_ … all ironies of naming 🤔 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 26/01/2026github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...; remember to follow the guidelines in github.com/ocaml/ocaml/.... Details on the original investigation in www.dra27.uk/blog/platfor... 011
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 26/01/2026Claude Code has committed in trunk OCaml! With great power comes great responsibility, and all that... 171
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 07/01/2026www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand... - “The Stats of the Nation”bbc.co.ukBBC Sounds - More or Less - Available EpisodesListen to the latest episodes of More or Less on BBC Sounds. 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 07/01/2026Fantastic special series of episodes of @timharford.ft.com and co’s More or Less occupying the BBC Radio 4 9am slot *every day* this week 100
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 04/01/2026I was implicitly referred to as a “hoary greybeard” the other day… my son just innocently asked how long I’ve worked on/in OCaml and I realised the answer is half my life 👴🏻 #old #greybeard 161
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 30/11/2025Of course, only have a paper ticket at all because apparently issuing an electronic ticket which can work both mainline station barriers and London Underground barriers is a feat engineering well beyond our national infrastructure… 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 30/11/2025Haven’t had to use a paper train ticket in a looong time, and was somewhat bemused to see the machine list that it would be printing two seat reservations. I am duly sat in my first non-specific seat of the day. Nice paper-saving there, @greateranglia.bsky.social! 100
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 29/11/2025Aaaand, breathe again… 😮💨 github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...github.comRelocatable OCaml - `--with-relative-libdir` by dra27 · Pull Request #14244 · ocaml/ocamlThis is the second of three PRs which implement Relocatable OCaml as proposed in ocaml/RFCs#53. The series of changes in this PR combine to allow the absolute location of the Standard Library (e.g.... 0122
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 29/11/2025☺️ There’s an eleventh-hour technical stall with a test harness for the second one (found by a Windows runner, but it’s not a Windows-specific issue!), but it should be good to go on Monday! 🥳 120
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 25/11/2025There are some minor corrections to be made in each branch, but Relocatable OCaml has passed its defence! 0172
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 08/11/2025Being British, I’m of course able to read this both negatively and positively 🫢 news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4585...news.ycombinator.comOpam on Windows is a masterpiece of engineering | Hacker News 120
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 05/10/2025Unsure whether to be more shocked by the discovery that there will be 10 current/former lay clerks singing at this morning’s mass at Westminster Cathedral (first time for a decade?) or that they’ve completely renovated the 100 year old song school toilets! 100
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 23/09/2025Quite an extreme case of rewrite-it-in-Rust… www.nature.com/articles/d41...nature.comThe Moon is rusting — thanks to ‘wind’ blown all the way from EarthLunar minerals generate the rust mineral hematite when bombarded with high-energy oxygen particles, experiments show. 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 15/09/2025Actually, dune package management is then able to stop doing anything special for the compiler - it becomes possible for Dune’s cache to cache the build instead (which was tested with a much earlier build back in March IIRC). So Dune still “builds” the compiler multiple times - but using the cache 020
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 15/09/2025Discuss announcement at discuss.ocaml.org/t/17253; “overview” PR at github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...; some additional pontifications at www.dra27.uk/blog/platfor...discuss.ocaml.orgRelocatable OCamlIt is my great pleasure, 3 years to the day since I finalised the first full demonstration of it in Ljubljana for the OCaml Workshop in 2022, to announce the general availability of Relocatable OCaml ... 121
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 15/09/20253 years since I finalised the demo of it for the OCaml Workshop in Ljubljana, Relocatable OCaml is finally submitted for review! 🥳🍾🎊 2205
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 29/08/2025Currently dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s and therefore wishing I’d used fewer ‘i’s and ‘t’s in my code (also, when I did I start handwriting code?? 🤔) #relocatable #ocaml 031
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 27/08/2025Reeling in shock and awe at just how simple and fast live-moving VM storage is in Hyper-V #scarred-by-esxi 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 17/08/2025andymasley.substack.com/p/contra-the... #world-beatingandymasley.substack.comContra the UK government, please don't delete your old photos and emails to save waterYou'd need to delete hundreds of millions of emails to save as much water as fixing your toilet 030
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 17/08/2025Wonders how much water Apple could save each year by having Apple Mail offer to reduce the size of photos being emailed from an iPad in the same way as it does on an iPhone? 🤔🧐🤫 120
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 15/08/2025Remembering the grandfather who could not forgive so that hopefully we might learn from it #VJ80 010
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 12/08/2025“I do not know whether there is anything peculiarly exciting in the air of this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that go on seems to me considerably above the proper average that statistics have laid down for our guidance.” Good old Oscar 🤣 000
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 04/08/2025Congratulations to Apple for anticlimax of the month with Apple “Intelligence”. In a metaphor for the age, seems all the time has been spent on the animations and hype and not a lot on it actually doing anything 🤷🏻♂️ #unabletosummarisethismessage 020
Reposted by David AllsoppYaron Minsky @yminsky.bsky.social · 21/07/2025Yet another small OCaml/OxCaml diff has been squished! Polymorphic parameters has just gotten merged upstream: github.com/ocaml/ocaml/... There's more to go (include functor, for example: github.com/ocaml/RFCs/p...), but it's nice to see more progress in this space.github.comPolymorphic Parameters by voodoos · Pull Request #13806 · ocaml/ocamlThis upstreaming PR adds the possibility to have function parameters with polymorphic types in the language. This work was originally done by @lpw25 in Jane Street's fork of the compiler with e... 1297
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 20/07/2025Testing opam packages for Relocatable OCaml which actually take advantage of it. Creating a new switch using the same version as one you've already built in another switch now takes 5 seconds, rather than 2 minutes (cloning the compiler itself takes just 100ms of that 5 seconds!) 2134
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 17/07/2025Is it late enough in the day to be allowed to acknowledge the #oxcaml themed Wordle? 010
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 02/07/2025Some very strong resonances for me (with thanks to @chshersh.com for drawing into my view over on X…)youtube.comKeynote: Rethinking our Adoption Strategy - Evan Czaplicki | Lambda Days 2025YouTube video by Code Sync 010
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 01/07/2025Childishly amused that the journey from Cambridge to Newcastle begins with a train to Liverpool #weregoingthewrongway 010
Reposted by David AllsoppYaron Minsky @yminsky.bsky.social · 13/06/2025I'm pleased to announce OxCaml! OxCaml is Jane Street's branch of OCaml. We've given it a new name and a snazzy logo, and done a bunch of work to make it easy for people to try. 510840
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 02/06/2025I was then wondering if there may be some trickery/annotion which would allow it to realise that the old ref cell is now consumed and the new one is the same, so reuse it (doesn’t the uniqueness mean we can’t observe the physical address either?) 110
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 02/06/2025Nice! Magic grates slightly - maybe show it in two stages… keep using a fresh cell each time, but use modes to eliminate the need for the runtime check and exception, _then_ use magic to eliminate the copy? Now wondering what might be in the pipeline that allows the compiler to infer that magic? 🤔 220
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 01/06/20251994 (and earlier): select text in one “app”, copy, paste to another “app” 2025: select text in one app, copy, switch to other app and discover they’ve disabled paste on the input fields. Return to other app. Write information on piece of paper. Type into other app. #progress #modern 231
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 18/04/2025Fell through a wormhole and sang the Solemn Passion + traditional Tallis Lamentations at Westminster Cathedral today. Realised the last time I did that was 17 years ago 🥺😳👴🏻 130
Reposted by David AllsoppThe Register @theregister.com · 16/04/2025Uncle Sam abruptly turns off funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE programdlvr.itUncle Sam abruptly turns off funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE programBecause vulnerability management has nothing to do with national security, right? US government funding for the world's CVE program – the centralized Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database of product security flaws – ends Wednesday.… 27641309
David Allsopp @dra27.uk · 16/04/2025Wondering if this is a judging stare about the delays getting Relocatable OCaml’s first pull request opened, or possibly something else… 🐈⬛ #catcaml 160