David Allsopp

@dra27.uk

Cambridge-based, London-working software engineer; sometime classical singer. @dra27 in many places, including GitHub; OCaml maintainer; opam maintainer; Windows {apolog,evangel}ist

I 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

Haven’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!

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Unsure 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!

3 years since I finalised the demo of it for the OCaml Workshop in Ljubljana, Relocatable OCaml is finally submitted for review! 🥳🍾🎊

Wonders 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? 🤔🧐🤫

“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 🤣

Testing 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!)

Terminal screenshot showing an existing opam switch being cloned in under 5 seconds on Linux, with the new compiler reporting its new location

I'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.

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1994 (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