Re: [Caml-list] Cross-compiling OCaml

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Wednesday 01 September 2004 01:37 pm, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> james woodyatt wrote:
> > Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> > > The Caml Trade wrote:
> > >
> > > Ok, I suppose you're confident in the longevity of OCaml
> > > then.  I think
> > > market mindshare has to be fought for, if one wants to continue
> > > to enjoy good contracts.
> >
> > You're trying to recruit the wrong people to join the fight.
>
> Yes, actually, I've realized that mailing lists such as this are
> filled with early adopters who are nevertheless 100% satisfied with
> their personal situation.  It's not everybody, but it's always
> somebody.  If I talk about improvement, they're always vocal about
               ^^^

I think that is an important point.

I have been a member of the Python community for a long time, and have 
seen that people are most definitely NOT shy about talking about things 
that need improvement.  In fact, there is a formal process for major 
improvements to the language: PEP [1].

Perhaps there is something about the criticisms (err, "improvements") 
that you are making.  Perhaps you are trying to solve problems that 
nobody else perceives.  Perhaps your "fix" for things would really make 
things worse.  Perhaps you lack the experience in any language, 
community, or business to make intelligent suggestions.

> how satisfied they are.  I encountered a similar phenom on

You also encountered it on freeciv-dev.

> comp.lang.python and this confirms the archetype.  My main purpose is
> to have a presence and provide a channel for people who are *NOT*
> satisfied.  In other words, I seek recruits for ocaml-biz, COCAN, and
> ocamlgames.

Frankly, through all your talk on all these forums, I have never yet 
seen even one single substantive thing come out of it.  I think you are 
all talk and no do.  In other words, a troll.

> > > My stereotype of a UNIX guy is someone who likes to play with
> > > text editors all day long.
> >
> > Thank you for sharing your stereotype.
>
> You're welcome.  There's a lot of truth in stereotypes.  One of the
> reasons I gave up on Seattle's local Python user groups, is I'd keep
> going to meetings, and they'd talk about all sorts of text processing
> scripting database stuff.  Never about 3D graphics, AI, or games.  I
> conclude that there's this entire world of text processual data that
> a lot of people are into, that they think is really really kewl, but
> that I've just never been involved in.  I suppose text has a

Actually, there are a lot more people doing that than 3D, AI, or games.

But that's like complaining about going to a Perl meeting and hearing 
about parsing or going to an Emacs meeting and hearing about Lisp.

3D stuff is not a Python strength.  If you're doing 3D, you are probably 
not using Python.  Why would they be talking about it then?

Here in the OCaml community, there is a lot of talk about math in all 
sorts of shapes.  There's little talk about threading (something I find 
very useful in Python) or text processing, though people *are* working 
on these things.

> compelling tractability, it seems to fit the UNIX scripter hacker
> meme.  Contrast this to Windows which doesn't even have a decent OS
> shell by default. Instead one has abundant GUI eye candy.  Between
> the UNIX and Windows world, there is clearly a split between textual

This is silly.  The fact that Windows ships a poor CLI by default 
doesn't mean that Unix is less graphically-oriented.  Almost every 
Linux distribution, plus Solaris and AIX, ship with a graphical mode 
enabled by default.  Most hide the CLI in almost the same way Windows 
does.  MacOS X goes even farther.  (Are you still forgetting that MacOS 
X is a Unix?)

> I think that's your point of view, not my project.  Discussions of
> what may or may not be my projects are best left to ocamlgames and
> ocaml-biz.

Or /dev/null, preferably.  Since the set of your projects is pretty much 
the same as the contents of that file.

[1] http://www.python.org/peps/

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