Open Source at Bloomberg: Introducing BuckleScript

A few months ago we published a new open source project on GitHub relating to OCaml — a programming language that is being used to create new tools and has recently gained interest in the web community. For example, Facebook’s flow project is written in OCaml.

Publishing this project surprisingly generated a whirlwind of interest for our efforts and to date it has received nearly 650 Stars, 30 Forks and 50 Watches.

We currently use OCaml in an advanced financial derivatives risk management application delivered through the Bloomberg Terminal. Because Bloomberg heavily uses JavaScript to deliver much of what makes the Bloomberg Terminal so unique, we decided to research and prototype a novel way to integrate OCaml in the JavaScript ecosystem.

The result is BuckleScript – which provides a unique backend for OCaml. We believe it has a lot to offer both the OCaml and JavaScript communities, and we are excited about sharing this project with the open source community.

Several key JavaScript and OCaml community members have already provided crucial information which impacted the direction of this project. That is why we invite all interested developers to visit GitHub, take a look at BuckleScript and provide us any feedback or comments.

We are not currently using BuckleScript on the Terminal, but stay tuned…