[Caml-list] Re: "ocaml_beginners"::[] Is Caml a fraud ( especially on Windows )?

[Joaquin Cuenca Abela <e98cuenc@yahoo.com>]

--- olczyk@interaccess.com wrote:
>
> So when I hear developers saying that their language
> is the best I
> imediately begin to wonder about it's deficiencies
> are.

You will have a hard time looking for a language
developer that don't states that its language is the
best one.

Stroustup prefers C++ to any other language for most
tasks, Ritchie said that if he was only allowed to
keep one language on a desert island, it will be C,
etc.

It's not a shock to me to discover that Caml creators
prefer Caml over other languages...

> The second incident involves ocamlc and cameleon.
> Trying to get
> cameleon to compile ( more on that later ), I
> discovered that ocamlc
> called cl.exe ( MS C/C++ compiler ). The reason is
> obvious. ocamlc
> translates ocaml to c and then passes it to the
> compiler.

? From what I know, ocamlc only calls cl.exe to
compile C code.  That's, if you do:

ocamlc test.c

and test.c is a C program, then it will compile it
using (surprise) a C compiler.  That's all.  It
compiles itself Caml code.

> This creates
> two things I have difficulties with:
> 
> 1) There is from the main caml page a link to a page
> where the person
>      claims to have benchmarked C vs caml and caml
> wins. I had several
> 
>      problems with that page, ( The main one, he
> uses goto's to 
>      optimise his code. The problem is that the
> optimiser in a C  
>      compiler has a much harder time with goto's
> present [ they are 
>      nonlocal branches ]. So I have to trust he does
> a better job at 
>      optimisation than the compiler would do. Yeah
> sure. )

performance tests are almost always crap.  Specially
language related ones.  To me the only important thing
is that Caml creates programs that run at an
acceptable speed, that's all.
 
> 2) After a bit of thought I realised something. If
> the compiler 
>     generates C code which gets compiled, then odds
> are that the
>     debugger is a wrapper of gdb. Big problems on

Dude, you seem to have done a false assumption, and
then you're building a big chain of false deductions
(and at the same time, you're insulting Caml
developers).

The debugger is not a wrapper of gdb.  And it's one of
the best debuggers that I've had the pleasure to use.
Some months ago I was doing a little project for the
university.

I first did it in perl, and then I tried to do it in
Caml (I wanted to learn a bit of Caml).  The final
Caml version was half in size than the perl version,
and the debugger has a hell of help when I need it. 
Specially the possibility to *go back* in the program
flow was a life-safer (why this feature does not
appears in big bold letters in the main ocaml page?).

I'm not member of a Caml fan club or something, but
when I'm learning a new language (and I try to do that
as regularly as possible), I always keep in mind two
things:

1) I'm a newbie.  If something is going bad, it's
probably my fault.
2) Don't insult people that try to help.

You're welcome to dislike Caml, but don't flame
others' work in the process.

Cheers,


=====
Joaquin Cuenca Abela
e98cuenc@yahoo.com

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