Fast, Bare, Rescript React (2022)

May 7, 2022 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

(Original published September 30, 2021. Updated May 7, 2022) Introduction Most of my Rescript series so far has been about combining Rescript with React using create-react-app. Now that I understand Rescript better, I’m not so sure create-react-app is a good fit for it. Mostly because it’s slow. Rescript compiles JSX natively, so we shouldn’t need slow and hard-to-configure webpack. Most of create-react-app is about hiding the configuration of webpack from the end-user.

Fast, Bare, Rescript React

September 30, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

Introduction (Note: There is a more recent version of this article) Most of my Rescript series so far has been about combining Rescript with React using create-react-app. Now that I understand Rescript better, I’m not so sure create-react-app is a good fit for it. Mostly because it’s slow. Rescript compiles JSX natively, so we shouldn’t need slow and hard-to-configure webpack. Most of create-react-app is about hiding the configuration of webpack from the end-user.

Let's Talk About Functors In Rescript

September 18, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

Introduction For basic syntax, functional programming does not feel that different from other paradigms. Sure, data and behaviour are separate, so you don’t have classes or objects or inheritance, but it feels relatively the same. This is especially true in Rescript, with the pipe-first syntax almost looking like a method lookup (comparable to the self object in Python). But if you go deeply into a study of functional languages, you start encountering bizarre words such as “monad” and “functor”.

Fun With Rescript Polymorphic Variants

September 6, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

Introduction Polymorphic variants in Rescript are strange beasts. They aren’t generally that useful in pure Rescript programming, but are frequently necessary in binding to Javascript. Polymorphic variants are extremely flexible (too flexible), but one of the most common uses is to represent a list of constant strings that a JS binding can accept. For example, the ubiquitous on function used for event handlers typically takes a string as its first parameter, as in on("click".

Parsing JSON in Rescript

August 14, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

Parsing dynamic content such as JSON in a statically typed language can be rather daunting. This article voices some opinions about schemaless design and migrates some of the messy json parsing code from the standard library to the excellent jzon library.

"Correctly" Unit Testing Express With Rescript And Zora

August 7, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

In a recent article I introduced rescript-zora, a library I wrote for unit testing Rescript code with lightning fast responses. One drawback of zora is that it’s very minimal. In this article, I explore some design principles and go on a bit of a rant about the definition of the word “unit”.

Quickly Testing Rescript With Zora

August 2, 2021 in Programming, Learning, Rescript

I wrote Rescript bindings to the zora test framework and wanted to write about how to actually use them.

Fast, Bare, Rescript React (2022)

Fast, Bare, Rescript React

Let's Talk About Functors In Rescript

Fun With Rescript Polymorphic Variants

Parsing JSON in Rescript

"Correctly" Unit Testing Express With Rescript And Zora

Quickly Testing Rescript With Zora

Dusty Phillips