From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id RAA01513; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:34:15 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id RAA01797 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:34:14 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA12380 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:09:51 +0100 (MET) X-SPAM-Warning: Sending machine is listed in blackholes.five-ten-sg.com Received: from giynz (vp191026.reshsg.uci.edu [128.195.191.26]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2D79of21188 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:09:50 +0100 (MET) Received: from albro by giynz with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 18tMpv-0004u2-00 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:09:07 -0800 Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity From: "Daniel M. Albro" To: caml-list@inria.fr Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <1047539347.1603.32.camel@giynz> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.2 Date: 12 Mar 2003 23:09:07 -0800 X-Spam: no; 0.00; ucla:99 caml-list:01 inherently:01 non-french:01 introductory:99 language's:01 bagley's:01 debugger:01 ocamldep:01 fleshed:01 wxwindows:01 ocaml:01 garbage:01 syntax:02 parser:02 X-Spam: no; 0.00; ucla:99 caml-list:01 inherently:01 non-french:01 introductory:99 language's:01 bagley's:01 debugger:01 ocamldep:01 fleshed:01 wxwindows:01 ocaml:01 garbage:01 syntax:02 parser:02 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I thought I might comment a bit on this thread as a recent learner of OCaml, which I've finally managed to learn at least well enough to write a nice (in my opinion) MCFG (multiple context free grammar) chart parser in it. I don't think the language is inherently any more difficult to learn than any other (well, maybe difficult to learn ALL of), but for non-French speakers the lack of introductory material is a problem. I tried off and on (mostly off) to learn the language for a year or two before getting it, and the thing that allowed me to easily learn the language was the recent translation of the O'Reilly book into English. If they ever publish the thing in English (I guess there's no agreement to do so), I think the language will begin to take off outside of France, because of what I think is the language's natural nitch -- it's a rapid prototyping language (by which I just mean that it's a very high level language and takes care of garbage collecting, etc.) that produces fast code. Lots of recent converts have been brought in for that very reason, mostly by Doug Bagley's language comparison page. Of course there are areas where the language or its development environment might be improved, and hopefully this would help with the popularity problem -- the debugger is rather nonintuitive and could use random extra features; I've found it a bit difficult to work with. I also hope that the stream parsing [< >] syntax stuff will get put back into the main language and made parseable by ocamldep, that the imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some expanded loop features like break statements, and that someone will do a wxWindows port. But these are minor points. The main thing is to keep pushing at the compiled code speed, availability of nice libraries, and good development environment that the language already has. Oh, and to advertise them! -- Daniel M. Albro ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners