(data) Update the Ahrefs success story and add a new story about the full stack ocaml web solution

[sabine]

Waiting for review / approval from @davesnx.

[Khady]

I'm not completely convinced by the angle tbh. Ahrefs was always using ocaml. Extending it to the frontend isn't a dramatic change or a real shift in the company culture. ocaml was basically present since day one. It would maybe be more accurate while still being interesting to explain that it's possible to bootstrap a company around ocaml and reach $100M+ in ARR, 150 employees, 4000+ servers, leadership in a competitive industry? And maybe do a complete different story focused on the migration to melange?

"Result", "Why OCaml", and "Solution" sections have some overlap, creating some repetition. Maybe one of them should be dropped, or we should create more differentiation?

We could make the style less corporate, to be more in line with ahrefs' identity

[sabine]

Will take another high-level look in terms of tone next week.

[sabine]

Ahh, next week turned out to be months later. Thanks for bearing with me. 🙇‍♀️

I fully went over this and reframed the story to be more in line with the feedback (which was very useful @Khady, thanks for that).

@davesnx maybe you're up for reviewing this as well?

I feel like this new version of the story much better captures the overall narrative of the company and what we discussed in the interview.

[davesnx]

Hey @sabine, I haven't reviewed the thing yet, but I agree with Louis here. I think the crawler story is great, and the full-stack story is also great. To be honest, rather than rewriting it, I would push it as a new success story (if it's possible!)

The narrative for choosing OCaml to write a crawler is much more risk-reward than using OCaml on the frontend (which at that point we already have the entire backend in OCaml already)

[sabine]

Interesting idea @davesnx. You mean we could treat success stories more like a blog? Or separate the two bets (writing the crawler in OCaml vs. transitioning the frontend to BuckleScript which led to achieving full stack OCaml) 🤔

I've seen this part of the site as a showcase for companies, so it's about telling a big picture story that ties in and references company history and achievements and how OCaml played a role in it, as well as how they're active in Open Source.

Treating success stories as a collection of case studies primarily is an interesting idea, as it would enable multiple stories from a company.

[davesnx]

Not sure as a blog, but have separate entries makes a lot of sense. Those are two different stories/use-cases/people/tradeoffs.

[sabine]

Alright, let me ping you back when I have two separate case studies on this. I think that's a good solution here, as the backstory is just too interesting not to cover it all.

[sabine]

@Khady @davesnx I split it up in two case studies. Focusing on one topic at a time does make them easier to read.

What do you think?

[davesnx]

I left a bunch of nit comments, but I think the entire content should be reviewed since there's a ton of duplication and not clear goal expressed.

[sabine]

@Khady @davesnx I addressed the review comments, are we good with these two case studies?

[Khady]

haven't had time to look at the full stack part

[sabine]

@Khady when you find the time to review the Full Stack Web story, I'm ready to merge and promote this :)