Wrap-up on my time at the ICFP '25 conference in Singapore

ICFP 2025 Wrap-up

ICFP, smaws gets multiple scheduler support

Update on smaws development - October 2025

Update on smaws development - September 2025

OCaml has no official solution to cross-compilation, with many disparate options developed for different use cases. In this article I describe my own experiments with cross-compilation and attempts to make it easier to get started and maintain.

OCaml cross-compilation: an experiment

ppxlib is usually just thought of as a tool for transforming OCaml code, but it can be used to generate new code too.

PPXLib is not just for transforming code

OCaml has some facilities for eliminating unused code - I explore what it can do, and how you structure your code to take advantage of it

Keeping it small: helping the compiler to remove unused code in OCaml

Nostalgia for old operating systems and applications is misplaced. We don't need to return; their failures are the lesson learned.


What we didn't learn from the past

My (unsuccessful) investigation into removing unused code from the compiled output of OCaml, including all the web archeology and deep-dive into how native binaries are formed.

Dead code elimination dead end: OCaml doesn't tree-shake

An AWS SAM application with a lot of APIs can still hit the CloudFormation stack resource limit. This guide shows you how to approach stack splitting for such an application.

Stack splitting with AWS SAM: Escaping the resource limit for API functions

How to do basic administration tasks, like add users to groups, with the IAM Identity Center when managing multiple AWS Accounts and user access

Using IAM Identity Center through the Command Line

Storybook 7 has changed the visual regression story, no longer relying on storyshots. This is how to get a visual regression workflow up and running with the new test-runner functionality.

Storybook 7 - Visual Regression Testing

Some notes on using ppx_expect to unit test

Unit testing OCaml code with ppx_expect: some notes

ocaml-cfgen gets resource reference, IAM policy generation and what's next

What I'm working on: resource references in ocaml-cfgen and IAM policy generation

A new project I'm working on to generate CloudFormation templates from OCaml bindings, and the problems that motivated its creation

What I'm working on: ocaml-cfgen

The design of CSS does not make styling HTML more maintainable - in fact, it seems to actively work against it.

CSS works against maintainability

Database ORMs like Prisma can make managing data access layers to SQL databases much easier for developers, but if used with a database that has dramatically different semantics and API, the benefits of abstraction are lost and turned into a maze of horrors

API Mismatch: Why bolting SQL onto noSQL is a terrible idea

It takes time to build up a sense of what to instrument to get the most out of your investment in observability, and it pays to know what primitives you have at your disposal and how to use them effectively.

Observability: What to instrument?

Learn about packaging your NodeJS-based AWS Lambda functions with esbuild for improved cold start times and reduced deployment package size

Package your NodeJS Lambda functions individually with esbuild for faster cold-start times

Starting a new Reason project for native development is relatively straightforward. We run through the basics.

Setting up a new Reason project

Learn how to build a type-safe JSON API in ReScript that runs on AWS Lambda

Type-safe APIs with ReScript

Learn how to use ReScript to write and deploy a simple AWS Lambda application

Using Rescript to build applications on AWS Lambda

Add retries, timeouts and cancellation to your fetch() calls without including another HTTP library

Retry, Timeout and Cancel with fetch()

Building transaction applications on DynamoDB can be a challenge - here is a few tips I've learned to ensure it is successful


Building successful transactional applications on DynamoDB

When would you use DynamoDB? A quick run-down of the advantages and disadvantages

When to use DynamoDB

Managing multiple accounts is a headache on AWS, especially when you're trying to maintain best practice
compliance and when operations isn't your day job. AWS's new Control Tower service makes it much easier
to provide governance and monitoring of your multi-account environment, automating the deployment of 
centralised audit logging, account guardrails and ensuring consistent base configuration of new accounts.


What is AWS Control Tower? A quick overview

Setting up a test of code that uses node-fetch with jest and Typescript

Testing node-fetch with jest in TypeScript

Setting up CloudWatch Logging for your API Gateway is painful - here's a script to make it easy

Setting up API Gateway CloudWatch Logging for your AWS Account

Understanding what is Amazon Cognito and how it is used

Understanding Amazon Cognito

Running your own Jitsi instance on EC2 with an easy-to-deploy CloudFormation solution

Run your own teleconferencing server with Jitsi on EC2

A guide for getting started with dynaglue

dynaglue: Getting Started Guide

Annoucing dynamodb-csv-export-import, a utility for importing the CSVs generated by the AWS DynamoDB Console 'Export to csv' feature

Latest

ICFP 2025 Wrap-up

Update on smaws development - October 2025

Update on smaws development - September 2025

OCaml cross-compilation: an experiment

PPXLib is not just for transforming code