From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 580C4BC6D for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2007 17:41:01 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AgAAAMadKUfUnw7Vlmdsb2JhbACCOYwvAQEBAQcEBhERB4EP X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.21,359,1188770400"; d="scan'208";a="3923090" Received: from ptb-relay02.plus.net ([212.159.14.213]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 01 Nov 2007 17:40:58 +0100 Received: from [80.229.56.224] (helo=beast.local) by ptb-relay02.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1Ind6H-0008Vr-ML for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:40:58 +0000 From: Jon Harrop Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Google trends Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 16:31:35 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5 References: <200711010102.39348.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <20071101094629.GA28190@furbychan.cocan.org> In-Reply-To: <20071101094629.GA28190@furbychan.cocan.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200711011631.35443.jon@ffconsultancy.com> X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 stdlib:01 recursive:01 bindings:01 bigarrays:01 ocaml:01 redistribute:01 module-level:01 subtyping:01 variants:01 46,:98 cheer:98 shim:98 liberal:98 smoke:98 On Thursday 01 November 2007 09:46, Richard Jones wrote: > This is hardly a cause to cheer. The two languages aren't compatible > in any way which is relevant to the real world... The compatibility has made it easy for us to port our software in OCaml on= =20 Linux to F# on Windows. That is (literally) valuable to us. > and the libraries are completely different. Much of the F# stdlib is both compatible and improved (e.g. tail recursive)= =20 and extended (e.g. Array.map2). Some other aspects such as web services and= =20 complex numbers are better in F#. For many other things, such as FFTW, I=20 write my own shim anyway and there are then no compatibility issues. Writin= g=20 bindings is easier with F# and there are no silly Bigarrays (woohoo!) or=20 anything. > Microsoft could have contributed valuable changes back to OCaml, As Skaller has said, we cannot contribute to the OCaml code base. Even if y= ou=20 fork the codebase you are still bound by its license and you are not allowe= d=20 to redistribute your own modified OCaml distribution. That is simply not viable for a corporation developing a product. We have=20 considered paying to join the CAML Consortium in order to get a more libera= l=20 license with a view to developing a graphical top-level for OCaml like=20 Mathematica's notebook front-end but licensing complications and the=20 reliability of binary distributions under Linux deterred us. > but instead decided to produce their own incompatible clone. I'm hoping the few remaining incompatibilities between the obvious core=20 language (e.g. being unable to supercede module-level definitions in F#) ar= e=20 ironed out before the first product release. The remaining differences=20 (labelled and optional arguments are different, no structural subtyping=20 including polymorphic variants) are sufficiently small that you can already= =20 port a lot of useful OCaml code to Windows quite easily and then sell it. =46rom a commercial perspective, it is very nice that you can sell F# DLLs= =20 easily. I've been wanting to sell Smoke for some time and this is the easie= st=20 route. Overall, anyone interested in earning a living from programming in OCaml=20 should definitely consider F#. We are already earning a significant amount = of=20 money from it and I only see that improving... =2D-=20 Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e