Re: [Caml-list] Why not article in journal ? (was Why People Aren't Using OCAML?)

[Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>]

I must confess some irritation, mixed with amusement, towards this
Jelovic op-ed piece and similar well-meaning but basically clueless
piece of advice that flourishes on the Web, on Usenet, and in computer
magazines.  It's basically "motherhood and apple pie" advice:
brush your teeth after every meal; have lots of libraries; 
say "please" and "thank you"; make self-contained distros; do your
homework well before the due date; write a DDJ paper; etc.  Yeah,
sure; tell me something I didn't know.

The Jelovic piece is particularly clueless, e.g. it talks about
"an Internet protocol library" (what is "the Internet protocol"?
TCP/IP sockets?  which one of the thousand protocols that run the Internet?) 
and "a library for dealing with standard internet data and encoding"
(pray define "standard internet data" -- streams of bytes?).

Notice also the .htm extension, the <lastname>.com vanity domain, and
the other pieces present on his Web site (e.g. "Some Facts About
Exercice", and "People One Can Learn From", containing names of people
I don't see what one can learn from except that one can make a
living writing boring C++ columns in computer rags), and my built-in
bogometer hits 100%.

OK, now that I've left off some steam, let's come back to Christophe's
comment:

> I read a french revue  called login which regularly publish series of article
> introducing a new language (like Rebol at the moment). Someone at INRIA could
> contact them (or other journal). Surely this would spread OCaml in the
> programming community ?
> The same could be done in other country ?

Sure.  Great idea.  DDJ, Login:, WSJ, USA Today, The Sun, Le Parisien, Il
Corriere della Sera, Cambio 16, it doesn't matter -- the more
articles, the better. Do I take it that you're volunteering writing
something for Login: ?  Excellent!  Thanks a lot!

I'm not just joking: anyone is most welcome to write some Caml
introductory material for their favorite magazine or Webzine
(Freshmeat, Linux News, Slashdot, etc).  That's actually an excellent
way to contribute to the Caml effort.

But don't expect "someone at INRIA" to do this for you.  The
"someones at INRIA" have already plenty of things to do, thank you,
such as maintaining and developing Caml.  The little time they have
left for writing, they put into dry and boring academic papers that
actually have some scientific content and actually count towards their
academic career.  Besides, there are so many publication outlets, each
with so few potentially interested readers, that a highly parallel
effort is the only way to go.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."

- Xavier "JFK" Leroy

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