Re: [Caml-list] Re: Why OCaml rocks

[David Teller <David.Teller@univ-orleans.fr>]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 11:29 +0100, Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Friday 09 May 2008 08:58:26 you wrote:
> > Are you sure or is that just a troll?
> 
> My point is that actual performance on real code is what matters and not the 
> number of optimizations that might theoretically apply. From the measurements 
> I have seen and done, Haskell is substantially slower despite its many extra 
> optimizations.

Ok, I'll take your word on that.


> > > 10. Limited standard library: I agree but this is only an issue because
> > > we are not able to fix the problem by contributing to the OCaml
> > > distribution.
> >
> > That's the whole idea of Community Caml / Batteries Included. Really, feel
> > free to contribute.
> 
> I thought Community OCaml was about tacking things on externally using macros 
> and extra libraries.

Yes and no.

* Batteries Included = 
** take the legacy standard library, ExtLib, Camomile, SDFlow and other
libraries (list undecided so far, but pcre, ocamlnet, camlzip are strong
candidates), add some glue to get them all to work together, and build a
comprehensive external library
** do the same thing for macros
** distribute everything as a GODI package with lots of dependencies

* Community OCaml = use the same codebase but 
** completely replace the legacy standard library
** turn this into a full, community-maintained, OCaml distribution.

In either case, the objective is to achieve something JDK-like in its
reach. 

> > Why a full new language? I may understand the interest of writing a
> new 
> > compiler for OCaml (or whichever other language) and gradually
> improving
> > the forked compiler, but that's a different story altogether.
> 
> A concurrent GC is the only major issue. Everything else is
> comparatively 
> easy.

Well, if you get to write a concurrent GC for the core of OCaml, feel
free to alert the community. People might be willing to help with
advanced features.

Cheers,
 David

-- 
David Teller
 Security of Distributed Systems
  http://www.univ-orleans.fr/lifo/Members/David.Teller
 Angry researcher: French Universities need reforms, but the LRU act
brings liquidations.