"I feel if OCaml had got its act together ..."

The great thing is we have choice. We have a huge number of ways to express ideas and ... do them!

I might draw a parallel with the number of spoken languages extent in the UK (only ~65M people). You are probably familiar with English. There are rather a lot more languages here. Irish, Scottish, Welsh - these are the thriving Brythonic languages (and they probably have some sub-types). Cornish formally died out in the sixties (the last two sisters that spoke it natively, passed away) but it has been revived by some locals and given that living people who could communicate with relos with first hand experience, I think we can count that a language that is largely saved. Cumbric ... counting still used by shepherds - something like: yan, tan, tithera toe.

I am looking at OCAML because I'm the next generation to worry about genealogy in my family and my uncle has picked Geneweb to store the data, taking over from TMG - a Windows app. His database contains roughly 140,000 individuals. Geneweb is programmed in OCAML.

If you think that programming languages are complicated ... have a go at genealogy. You will soon discover something called GEDCOM and then you will weep!

▲

DrewADesign 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

For personal projects? Sure. In nearly any development organization larger than one person, unilaterally deciding to use OCAML instead of what everybody else uses would go over about as well as unilaterally deciding to use Aramaic at meetings.

▲

Akronymus 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From the gedcom wiki page it doesnt seem that bad. At least the data format itself. But it seems like its very easy to screw up working with it.

▲

gerdesj 3 days ago | parent [-]

GEDCOM was developed by the Mormons and was not really designed to encompass the rich diversity of human relationships. You can seriously overload the notes fields!

Genealogy is really hard but it is important to not get too bogged down with formality and get the data stashed in one form or another. Genealogy "facts" decay with a horribly short half life. It is also important to accept all "facts" as is and not try to interpret them too much - that's something else.

I'm 55 years old and have memories dealing with my grandad on my mother's side who was born in 1901. So, within reason, I can record some second hand facts going back to very early C20. My parents were born 1942/3. etc etc. However, the gold standard is written evidence of a fact.

I think that genealogy really needs to discover systems like Elastic/Open Search and not try to coerce the data to a fixed schema.

Everyone thinks their family tree is a tree. No it really isn't - it's a thicket!

I have a relative that my uncle found from Padstow in Cornwall in C16 - her first born was probably a bastard fathered by the local squire's son. There's a soldier from WWI whom the family "knowledge" from around two generations ago was convinced he was a deserter. It turns out he was honorably discharged and emigrated to Canada. On of my G^5 dad died from septicemia after punching a window in a drunken pub brawl.

All of the above has documentary evidence, expect for the desertion thing, which turned out to be bollocks. Oh there is a good chance of a mass-murderer back in C18 near Devizes, Wiltshire!

This is where IT gets really interesting. How on earth do you go about genealogy data? You are sure to piss off someone(s) who want to wear the rose tinted specs and if you think modern politics are a bit challenging, why not try to deal with politics across centuries and the random weirdness that is your own family 8)

	▲	Akronymus 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> How on earth do you go about genealogy data? My extremely naive approach would a scheme where you have a header containing a list of used types of information fields, then a list of entries for people, then relationships (genealogical descendants, familial relationships with a start and end date (optional, YMD format, that you only fill in with as far as you know, so if you only know the year, you just set that.)) then a list of various events, then a list of supporting documents with a confidence value, where each document has a list of people and a list of events they are relevant to. then a list of basically freeform fields, that can link to events, documents, people, etc. where the types are defined in the header. typing this out at 2 in the morning, so sorry for the incoherence.

▲

beezlewax 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's weird to see someone from the UK champion the Irish language as a choice as if they didn't try to systematically wipe it from the face of the earth for quite a long period of time.

Choice is good of course so do keep up the good work.

▲

gerdesj 3 days ago | parent [-]

My grandad's family on my dad's side was driven out of Dublin by some folks who went on to set their house on fire, back in the day. They were warned off by a maid and legged it to England. A few generations earlier, on the same line, my ancestors were German immigrants to London.

I will upvote your comment nonetheless. I see it has been DVd which I don't like to see - we all have our views.

	▲	gerdesj 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Incidentally. "WN" is quite well documented. Was there something similar in Ireland, before independence? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_Not