Top all-time · #11512
Ersin Akinci
Personal blog · ersin-akinci.medium.comprogrammingweb
Ersin Akinci's personal blog at ersin-akinci.medium.com covers programming and web. Since 2021, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 9 times, most often “Confused about ReScript? ReScript,Reason,ReasonML,BuckleScript Explained (2020)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-08-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ersin Akinci's Medium posts to explain the confusing split between ReasonML, ReScript and OCaml, and the community fragmentation that followed.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Confused about ReScript? ReScript,Reason,ReasonML,BuckleScript Explained (2020)7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-01-20
What Hacker News says?
> ReasonML is now Rescript Apparently it's not. The whole thing is a mess :) https://ersin-akinci.medium.com/confused-about-rescript-resc...
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “OCaml 5.0 Alpha Release”Submitted Confused about ReScript? ReScript,Reason,ReasonML,BuckleScript Explained (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> if rescript/reason issue harmed rescript. Personal anecdote: yes, it has. I was very interested in Reason when it appeared, and it seemed to have immense momentum: exploring arguably better (or more familiar) syntax, tool integrations etc. I know that people ran regular OCaml workflows/projects with it. And then the whole split happened ... why? "We don't want to be constrained by OCaml" while keeping all of OCaml…
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “OCaml 5.0 Alpha Release”Submitted Confused about ReScript? ReScript, Reason, ReasonML, and BuckleScript explained as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs an aside I just discovered that Reason (alternative syntax for Ocaml) had been forked by the Bucklescript (Ocaml/Reason to JS compiler) team. The fork is called Rescript and is aims at being a new language and to part with Ocaml. Rescript is also the new name of Bucklescript (compiler) btw. If you don't get any of this, I don't blame you. Here's a thorough explanation of this mess : https://ersin-akinci.medium.co…
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “Dream – Tidy Web Framework for OCaml and ReasonML”Yup, that's a rough start. I don't see how any project could take off with rebranding and splitting from an already small community, Reason users, (itself a split a relatively small community, Ocaml users). It seems like the road to success is the other way around. Make it a little better while super easy to adopt and iterate on that à la TypeScript or Reason, which can be considered alternate syntaxes for Javascrip…
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “From TypeScript to ReScript”ReasonML crippled themselves, too, by splitting the already tiny community between Reason and ReScript Here's a good (neutral!) write-up: https://ersin-akinci.medium.com/confused-about-rescript-resc...
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “Learning Elm by porting a medium-sized web frontend from React (2019)”For anyone who is as confused as I was. It looks like ReasonML because it has the same roots: https://ersin-akinci.medium.com/confused-about-rescript-resc...
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “ReScript aims to be a strictly typed JS, simpler and faster than TS”It seems like they simply wanted to add stuff that might not have been possible without changing ReasonML, and so they built their own framework and rebranded it to ReScript: https://ersin-akinci.medium.com/confused-about-rescript-resc...
Comment linking /confused-about-rescript-rescript-reason-reasonml-and-bucklescript-explained-ab4230555230
on “Ask HN: What Happened to Elm?”
