Jane and the Compiler

Most of the time, our relationship to programming languages is somewhat remote; we depend on the arcane details of the languages we use, but we don’t usually have much of a say in how those languages evolve. At Jane Street, we started out in that mode, as a mere user of the language. But over the last 15 years, we’ve moved to a more active stance, where today, we have a team of compiler devs who actively contribute to OCaml, and where we’re more deeply involved in figuring out the future direction of the language. In this talk, we discuss that history, touching on how upstream changes impacted us along the way, how we came to start making changes ourselves, and what ongoing projects we’re excited about. Presented by Yaron Minsky Yaron Minsky joined Jane Street back in 2002, and claims the dubious honor of having convinced the firm to start using OCaml. He also spends way too much time teaching his kids how to program.