Re: [Caml-list] Whither the Caml Consortium?

[Markus Mottl <markus@oefai.at>]

Rolf Wester schrieb am Dienstag, den 23. Oktober 2001:
> The good reasons to use OCaml cannot be "I love it" or "it's fun to
> program in OCaml" but that it makes me more productive (at least when
> I'm paid for what I'm doing).

Everybody claims that their language is the most productive one,
but not everbody can prove it. To be honest: it is much easier to
"prove" this for Java than for OCaml, because there are legions of more
Java-programmers with zillions of projects.  So Mr. J. can say: "Look
at the many cool things that have been done in Java!". Whether these
things were produced in a short time or how much effort was necessary
is usually not observable anyway.

The pure quantitative lack of significant OCaml-projects (on a
comparative scale) makes it difficult to argue, which places us into
the chicken-and-egg problem. So we better write code rather than lament
about the lack thereof...

> But even if you have a killer-app written in OCaml you will still
> have to explain to your manager (and even more your colleagues) why
> you would not have been able to write this app in C++ or Java (or why
> it would have been much more effort to do it in another language).

Sure! But having a "constructive" proof of your claim is more convincing
than the claim alone. Especially for managers, who have a tough time
estimating the validity of your theoretical claims in fields they are
not experts in.

> OCaml's features should be compared to other languages and statements
> made concerning other languages should objectively be analyzed and
> criticized.

And some Java-guru would then "objectively" analyze things from his
point of view...

> And if for a certain kind of application another language is more
> suitable this should also be clearly stated.

No, never say anything bad about your product. Never! We all know that
this is dishonest, but that's the way Java, Windows, VB, etc. have
conquered the market. There is good reason why I have switched to a
technical field from business... :(

If you want to do marketing, then do marketing, not science. You'll
have to play by the rules of psychology then rather than use technical
measures.

Regards,
Markus Mottl

P.S.:  Even though it is much more effective, I don't want to do
       "marketing" for OCaml: I will still continue trying to convince
       by honest arguments.

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
-------------------
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs  FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr  Archives: http://caml.inria.fr