Re: JIT-compilation for OCaml?

[Markus Mottl <mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at>]

On Wed, 03 Jan 2001, Joseph R. Kiniry wrote:
> > No, I don't use it at all, but I believe you that it must be very
> > painful ;)
> 
> Not to go offtopic, but I'd rather see list members educated rather than 
> FUD'ded.  If ML is a Prius we still have to respect the Taurus that is Java.

There was a smiley after my criticism... - anyway, though I'd never want
to switch to Java when I can use OCaml, it isn't this bad compared to
other mainstream languages. At least some major insanities have been
removed.

> In fact, one of my companies chose Java over five competitor languages 
> (Objective-C, C++, Eiffel, CLOS, and oTcl) in a head-to-head test.  Note 
> that this company is a group of uber-geeks with a language geek at the helm 
> (me), so we were not working in a vacuum.

Why didn't you compare to OCaml or other FPLs (e.g. Haskell, Clean, etc.)?
Business reasons?

> Certainly the breadth and growth of Java's libraries is a marvel, but I 
> *certainly* wouldn't say that they are a uniform example of good design. 
> It amazes me that a package can go through so much semi-public design 
> review and still have serious design flaws.  Until one uses a library on 
> large projects with many people for a some reasonable period of time, 
> claims of excellence, esp from the library vendor, are premature.

It would be interesting to know what (except for GUI-stuff) people are
missing in OCaml or other FPLs. I just haven't used Java often enough
to know details about its libraries.

- Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl