Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity

[Martin Weber <Ephaeton@gmx.net>]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:34:34PM +0100, Michael Schuerig wrote:
> (...)
> Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages 
> and database access? Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is 
> mostly yes. 

I'm working next to asic designers, and they give a shit about the web,
database access and guis :) They want scriptability and a clean programming
interface instead ... (and yeah, they appreciate good guis).

On the other hand, they are electrical engineers, so I guess they are not
too keen on learning yet another language - most proprietary tools they
use offer tcl as the scripting language, so that's a de facto standard -
and they're not interested in typing(1) around either ... as soon as it works
it's fine :) (see pentium bug - it's still there... but patched:-)) 

> That being as it is, would things in industry be that much 
> better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise 
> applications? 
> (...)

I don't know what usually classifies as 'enterprise application' but I
think what I'm doing is one - application(s) written solely for the use
within the producing corner - no end user will ever see it (except if
we release the stuff as opensource, but that's still being debated :).

That said, in *my* environment I don't think (oca)ml really has any
chance against tcl and/or perl, just because those two (or especially
tcl) are so simple. And I don't think that it can be the intention of
ocaml to get that simple as is tcl...

On the other hand, *I* could write the application in Ocaml, plugging
in both C extensions and (on that way, too) a tcl interpreter while
enabling an ocaml toplevel for the savvy.... hmmm.... 

but you know.. inherit a ton of C code..

regards,

-martin (taking another couple of notes for the 2.0)

(1) not as in inputting text into the computer, but stumbling over
beginner errors like my beloved +. :)

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