The coding language used by the most elite developers in finance | Hacker News Reader

The coding language used by the most elite developers in finance

efinancialcareers.co.uk

10 pointsefctech13 comments

This does sound like a bit of an advertisement for Jane Street. Ocaml is nice enough from my playing around with it, I do think its Download -> Hello World story is a bit more complicated than it aught to be, but its an ML family programming language and is pretty nice. I am not sure if I prefer F# to Ocaml, but they are both nice.

I think the "harder to get a job elsewhere" line, and allusion to a Goldman Sachs Slang programmer is a bit odd. If you are able to get a job at Ocaml or GS or whatever and work there for a few years you shouldn't have trouble working somewhere else.

Regarding employability. Isn't OCaml more prevalent in Europe? France obviously for one but England, too? Also I would assume with knowing OCaml one would also be fairly comfortable with F#, which also should bring some opportunities. Again perhaps more so in Europe or England to be precise.

> paid its lucky graduate trainees a $200k annual base salary, plus a $100k sign-on bonus, plus a $100k-$150k guaranteed performance bonus

Sounds nice. Any open opportunities for Python devs to apply automation skills in Finance? Hopefully remote.

This is the most HN comment ever. Literally half a million dollar salary and OP is stipulating that it must also be remote

No mention of C++? (https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?computerProgrammer=tru... and probably most HFTs)

C++ is just the language everyone in the fintech world uses, as a matter of course, so not worthy of a story. It works and everybody knows it works. Failing would be news. Knight Capital was news!

(Although, a worryingly large fraction of that world remain stuck on C++98 compiled with Gcc-4.)

OCaml is an oddball language, its users are oddballs, and companies that employ them are oddballs. That makes it a good story when they show that they can actually succeed in a world utterly dominated by C++.

OCaml is a pretty good, albeit GC'd, language just about to graduate to being able to use multiple cores, so now is an exciting time for its users.

Is Ocaml actually this legit? Or is this article just biased fluff.

Seems a little biased since they don’t even talk about its advantages. AFAIK not many companies use OCaml in practice but it is used quite a bit in academia in Europe.

That said (I may be biased as well) I was taught OCaml in uni and enjoyed its succinctness and expressiveness.

It's mostly C++ or Java (& other JVM languages) in high class finance, some python and verilog for their niches. The article is about the odd one out firm that has its own rather unique stack. It essentially says so at the end - "[you] become less employable anywhere else".

Meh. Languages are a toolbox. Right screwdriver for the right job.

Also used in Xen.

https://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html

TLDR: Ocaml at Jane Street.

TLDR: this "article" is a paid ad for Jane Street

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