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

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

[David Gurr]

 > From: 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.   

My summary of this type of advice is "Make the easy easier and
make the hard harder".  If you want to turn Ocaml into the next
visual basic, it is excellent advice.  If you want to turn
Ocaml into the next Ocaml, then I think it is best that you
and the "someones at INRIA" keep doing what you all have been doing.  
I vote for the latter.

-David Gurr

PS I do appreciate the "dry and boring academic papers".
-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr.  Archives: http://caml.inria.fr

Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Dennis Gang Chen wrote:
> > I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> > hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?
> 
> I would like to hear more about using ocaml in VLSI design and
> verification. For simulation and formal verification of chips, speed is crucial.

Well, I work in the subfield called VLSI Physical Design, so simulation
here means SPICE, and the verification isn't formal. However, I do have 
a little bit of experience in the whole ASIC/RTL and behavioral modeling 
so I'll toss in my two cents. 

People write simulation models in all kinds of languages, including Perl
and Java, so speed is not always of the essence. For those cases where it
is, people often write in C (I worked at Denali for a while and I wrote
some of their models) since Verilog and VHDL simulators sometimes aren't 
quite good enough. Where would OCaml fit in there? Well, I've often
thought that the FFTW approach of just spitting out optimized C would be 
workable, and since most people acknowledge that MLs are really good for 
writing compilers, how about a Verilog (or VHDL if you're European :) RTL 
to C compiler? I had started on a Verilog front end for other reasons but
since migrating to physical design it's not as important. Incidentally, in 
the ASIC flows I've worked on a Verilog front end would have *lots* of
uses, flattening hierarchy, scan chain insertion, etc. Anyone interested
in working on such a tool? 

For formal verification I suspect you're asking about fast BDDs, a topic
that has come up a few times on this list. I suspect that for very
demanding problems you'll want the BDD library in C so as to minimize the 
overhead. I'd be delighted to find that a "pure OCaml" BDD library was
competitive to a well optimized C one, but I doubt that will be true. In
any case, you can just link with one of the available C libraries. I'm
surprised that no one has made a publically available binding to Cudd or 
some other C library. Maybe I'll do that one day if someone else doesn't
beat me to it. Once you have such a library available, I think that other 
tools (say a symbolic model checking tool) could be coded up far more
easily in OCaml than in many other languages, and the performance
bottleneck will have been addressed. 

>From the physical design standpoint, I just find it easier to express
complex algorithms in ML than other languages I've used, for all the 
old reasons. I suppose for things like linear programming OCaml isn't 
(yet :) ideal but the problems I work on are not huge, think leaf cell 
synthesis scale rather than whole chip (for now!). 

Anyways Dennis, if you're interested in pursuing any of those things I
mention, please contact me. One constraint is that I'd like to make source
available so that other EDA people get sucked into the OCaml vortex. There
are too many in-house point tools that die because they never get out. I've 
noticed quite a few postings from people in the industry (I post from my
ISP but I work at Artisan) so I know there are some more of us out there. 
Come on guys, do you want to hack on Perl for the rest of your careers? 
Let's make OCaml the EDA language of choice!

-- Brian


-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr.  Archives: http://caml.inria.fr

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

[Christophe Raffalli]

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 ?

-- 
Christophe Raffalli
Université de Savoie
Batiment Le Chablais, bureau 21
73376 Le Bourget-du-Lac Cedex

tél: (33) 4 79 75 81 03
fax: (33) 4 79 75 87 42
mail: Christophe.Raffalli@univ-savoie.fr
www: http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~RAFFALLI
-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr.  Archives: http://caml.inria.fr

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

[Xavier Leroy]

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

-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr.  Archives: http://caml.inria.fr