Mandelbrot renderer

Mandelbrot renderer

[Jon Harrop]

Following Oliver's objections regarding the lack of serious software written 
in OCaml (e.g. web servers), I have written a very serious Mandelbrot 
renderer. The program is 35 lines of OCaml and renders using OpenGL. This 
page breaks it down and describes how it works:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/free/fractal

I've written a simple, recursive C++ version as well. It weighs in at 45 lines 
but only 6% more bytes. If you specialise the complex-number arithmetic in 
the OCaml:

  let rec mandelbrot i cx cy zx zy =
    if i = 63 || zx *. zx +. zy *. zy > 4. then i else
      let zx = zx *. zx -. zy *. zy and zy = 2. *. zx *. zy in
      mandelbrot (i+1) cx cy (zx +. cx) (zy +. cy)

then, with only -O3, the C++ is actually significantly slower. The performance 
of the C++ improves considerably with -ffast-math so that it is slightly 
faster. The performance of the C++ can be further improved by using an 
imperative style. This is on both AMD64 and x86.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists

Re: [Caml-list] Mandelbrot renderer

[David Baelde]

2005/11/23, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:
> Following Oliver's objections regarding the lack of serious software written
> in OCaml (e.g. web servers), I have written a very serious Mandelbrot
> renderer. The program is 35 lines of OCaml and renders using OpenGL. This
> page breaks it down and describes how it works:

Nice job, but I don't think it has something to do with Olivier's
remarks. Serious software written in OCaml exists (Astrée, Coq, ..),
no one doubts that. What lacks is mainstream serious software, and it
makes OCaml not so visible.

People don't realize OCaml is a general purpose language: I was once
told on an IRC chan: "OCaml ? I only know one software written in
OCaml..." Also, people learn to write many fun real-world application
in C, but only "boring" scientific stuff in OCaml (when they're taught
OCaml). That's the kind of problems which was adressed.

Cheers.
--
David

Re: [Caml-list] Mandelbrot renderer

[Yaron Minsky]

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On 11/23/05, David Baelde <david.baelde@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2005/11/23, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:
> > Following Oliver's objections regarding the lack of serious software
> written
> > in OCaml (e.g. web servers), I have written a very serious Mandelbrot
> > renderer. The program is 35 lines of OCaml and renders using OpenGL.
> This
> > page breaks it down and describes how it works:
>
> Nice job, but I don't think it has something to do with Olivier's
> remarks. Serious software written in OCaml exists (Astrée, Coq, ..),
> no one doubts that. What lacks is mainstream serious software, and it
> makes OCaml not so visible.


I rather suspect that Jon was making a joke here....

People don't realize OCaml is a general purpose language: I was once
> told on an IRC chan: "OCaml ? I only know one software written in
> OCaml..." Also, people learn to write many fun real-world application
> in C, but only "boring" scientific stuff in OCaml (when they're taught
> OCaml). That's the kind of problems which was adressed.


I think this really is a problem, although there are a few exceptions
(mldonkey and unison come to mind.)  But the lack of applications is not, I
think, for lack of suitability of the language.  The company where I work
(quick hiring plug: http://janestcapital.com/ocaml.html) has had quite a bit
of luck building rather interesting and practical trading and financial
applications in OCaml, but those are all for internal use, so it doesn't
help much for OCaml's visibility.

y

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Re: [Caml-list] Mandelbrot renderer

[Christophe Raffalli]

> I think this really is a problem, although there are a few exceptions 
> (mldonkey and unison come to mind.)  But the lack of applications is 
> not, I think, for lack of suitability of the language.  The company 
> where I work (quick hiring plug: http://janestcapital.com/ocaml.html) 
> has had quite a bit of luck building rather interesting and practical 
> trading and financial applications in OCaml, but those are all for 
> internal use, so it doesn't help much for OCaml's visibility.
> 

And what about python or java ?

I do not use a single python program and I only use one java program 
which is cgoban and one ocaml program which is unison (if I do not count 
the programs I am using for my research, because my research is related 
to type system so this is biased).

So, for me, ocaml is more visible that python and equally visible than 
ocaml ...

I think this kind of visivility needs time.

This is for my desktop computer ... however, on my V800 portable phone, 
java is very visible (all my games are in java there). May be ocaml 
software for pdas and phones are the way to make ocaml visible ;-)

And as I said in another post, I really would like an OCaml sudoko 
GENERATOR (not a solver) on my portable phone, I almost finished all the 
grids I have in the demo of a java commercial program I found on 
getjar.com, so this now is urgent :-)


-- 
Christophe Raffalli
Université de Savoie
Batiment Le Chablais, bureau 21
73376 Le Bourget-du-Lac Cedex

tél: (33) 4 79 75 81 03
fax: (33) 4 79 75 87 42
mail: Christophe.Raffalli@univ-savoie.fr
www: http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~RAFFALLI
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Re: [Caml-list] Mandelbrot renderer

[Chris Campbell]

On 23/11/05, David Baelde <david.baelde@gmail.com> wrote:

> People don't realize OCaml is a general purpose language: I was once
> told on an IRC chan: "OCaml ? I only know one software written in
> OCaml..." Also, people learn to write many fun real-world application
> in C, but only "boring" scientific stuff in OCaml (when they're taught
> OCaml). That's the kind of problems which was adressed.

Here's an idea for an application.  How real world it is I'm not sure.

A good podcast client for Linux with support for Bittorrent.  I tried
a few at the weekend and basically they all suck to varying degrees of
suckiness.  Usually it's the UI that prevents you from doing anything
because you can't fathom how to work it and the help that's there
isn't more than a HTML-ised About box.

Hierachical viewing of casts, queueing of downloads, all the podcasty
stuff you need.  ITunes is great, once you figure out how to add a
cast it's easy.  It has two issues a) I have to be in Windows (don't
have a mac yet) and b) downloading big casts like the SICP lectures is
a pain (too great to miss tho'); ITunes doesn't seem to allow queueing
yet (couldn't find it).  Oh and it strains the server because they
aren't Bittorrent hosted casts.

Podcasts + Bittorrent isn't a new idea, but it's a good one.  Why have
the server do all the work, when clients can lighten your load?  If
you're a popular podcaster your bandwidth costs are going to be high.

Irrespective of bt support a good client is needed. Have it handle
ITMS pod links so I can write a ffox extension to call it on those
links, and an intuitive gui and it's a contender.


Just a thought,
Chris

p.s. if anyone knows of a good one already pls let me know.  So far
the best I've found is a command line app.