OCaml Interview Questions for Developers

OCaml is widely used in various industries due to its strong static type system, functional programming paradigm, and high-performance capabilities, which together facilitate the development of reliable, efficient, and maintainable software applications.

OCaml, short for “Objective Caml,” was developed in the mid-1990s at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) by Xavier Leroy, Jérôme Vouillon, Damien Doligez, and others. It evolved from an earlier language called Caml, which itself was a dialect of the ML (Meta Language) family.

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

To assess the proficiency of OCaml developers in programming interviews, we offer an array of practical coding tasks and interview topics detailed below. Furthermore, we have devised various recommended approaches to guarantee that your interview questions effectively gauge the candidates’ OCaml competencies.

OCaml example question

Help us design a parking lot app

Hey candidate! Welcome to your interview. Boilerplate is provided. Feel free to change the code as you see fit. To run the code at any time, please hit the run button located in the top left corner.

Goals: Design a parking lot using object-oriented principles

Here are a few methods that you should be able to run:

• Tell us how many spots are remaining
• Tell us how many total spots are in the parking lot
• Tell us when the parking lot is full
• Tell us when the parking lot is empty
• Tell us when certain spots are full e.g. when all motorcycle spots are taken
• Tell us how many spots vans are taking up

Assumptions:

• The parking lot can hold motorcycles, cars and vans
• The parking lot has motorcycle spots, car spots and large spots
• A motorcycle can park in any spot
• A car can park in a single compact spot, or a regular spot
• A van can park, but it will take up 3 regular spots
• These are just a few assumptions. Feel free to ask your interviewer about more assumptions as needed

Interview best practices for OCaml roles

For efficient OCaml interviews, it’s crucial to take into account various aspects, such as the applicants’ experience levels and the specific engineering position they’re interviewing for. To ensure your OCaml interview questions yield optimal outcomes, we suggest adhering to these best practices when interacting with candidates:

• Create technical queries reflecting real-world situations in your organization. This method maintains the candidate’s engagement and allows for a more accurate assessment of their suitability for your team.
• Foster a collaborative environment by permitting candidates to pose questions throughout the interview.
• Assessing familiarity with common OCaml libraries such as Core, Lwt, and Async, will also be beneficial in evaluating a candidate’s OCaml skills.

Additionally, it’s vital to follow standard interview procedures when conducting OCaml interviews. This encompasses tailoring question difficulty based on the applicant’s expertise, offering prompt feedback on their application status, and allowing candidates to inquire about the evaluation or collaborate with you and your team.