Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[oliver@first.in-berlin.de (Oliver Bandel)]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 01:56:50PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 08:12:36AM -0500, John Carr wrote:
> > 1. Nobody else knows the language.
> > 2. It doesn't run on our platform.
> > 3. It will break and we can't get support.
> 
> These things will always be a problem until OCaml becomes (to use a
> marketing term) a "whole product".  This means that it has a full
> suite of supporting skills and documentation.  There are currently two
> books, and a few web tutorials.  For OCaml to become a whole product
> we'd need to see a few shelves full of books at the local bookstore,
> and specialists in each city offering support, and major external
> companies signing on.

Point 1 => same problem as with Linux about ten years ago

Point 2 => really not running on that platform?

Point 3 => The INRIA-cathedral will help to prevent this problem
           in the sense of "we do not allow any hacker to make
           changes in the core language"




[...]
> 
> This means that if OCaml's development process is, on average, just
> slightly slower than the average (however that would be measured) then
> OCaml will NEVER overtake other languages and become widely adopted.
> In this sense, an open, rapid development model is vital, and an
> unresponsive team at INRIA could kill adoption, and eventually any
> chances the language has of becoming widely used.

IMHO OCaml is some decades in the future... what you can do with
OCaml right now (the language, not necessarily the additional 
libraries and the programs you can find as free-software) is
much, much more powerful than what you can do in other languages.

I was astouned how powerful the language is, compared to
Perl. If I prefer OCaml to Perl, even if Perl has more libraries
and modules (via CPAN), becaus eof the power of the language,
then this is MY decision. An d I think I have reasons for this decision.

When "the other people" don't decide to use Ocaml, so that is not
my problem. Yes, it would be nice to use that language on a job,
not only in own provate projects. But I don't think that the
bazaar-method will change one of the above prejudices.

It's not a matter of the developing method, it's a matter of
hype, of marketing and many prejudices, as you also can see
on the topic of fuzzy logic.
It's bad, stupid, silly.... and functional programming....
...most people think that "functional programming" is what
imperative non-OO languages provide: They have problems
with the name "functional".
Often people think: C++ is object-oriented and C is functional.
So when you mention a functional language, people often say
it's old stuff, because you don't mention OOP.

You can't stop ignorance and prejudice with a different developing
method!


Ciao,
   Oliver

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