Google trends

Google trends

[Jon Harrop]

The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a 
mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X. 
Hooray! :-)

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[skaller]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 01:02 +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
> 
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> 
> I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a 
> mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X. 
> Hooray! :-)

Not so happy though: the libraries are the most important thing,
and will not overlap so well, so that many programs simply won't
run unmodified on both systems. 

Most build scripts will also be broken.

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:

>
> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since
> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
>
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0


Well, I can't see any sky-rocketing there.
Also I found no absolute numbers of requests on that page.


It rather looks like a gradually decreasing interest with some
casual ups and downs.

>
> I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a
> mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X.
> Hooray! :-)

I think, when F# will be used more frequently, people instead will ask for F# on
Linux and OS-X, instead of switching to OCaml.

So I don't think this is worth a "Hooray!".

Ciao,
   Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

Oliver Bandel wrote:
> Zitat von Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:
> 
>> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since
>> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
>>
>> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> 
> 
> Well, I can't see any sky-rocketing there.
> Also I found no absolute numbers of requests on that page.

Google Trends only shows relative trends, but you can
try find different references, in order to find your
bearings:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2Cerlang&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2Chaskell&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml%2CC%23&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

(So, F# has climbed up to about the level of Erlang, which is
also on a rise, but there's some way to go before catching up
with Haskell, and compared to C#, interest is relatively zero).

Of course, you have to think about alternative meanings of
your search terms (e.g. Haskell County, the Erlang-B formula,
the musical chord F#, ...), but I've assumed these to be
insignificant, at least for Haskell and Erlang trends.
But still, working with the tool for a while can help you
build some intuition:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=C%2B%2B%2CJava%2CC%23&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

Playing around with it a while back, I got the distinct
feeling that interest in functional languages is stirring
somewhat, while C++, Java, UML are on a slow but steady
decline (by this measure).

When you start finding blog entries claiming that F# sucks
because someone picked it up and tried some solution that
works really well in C++, python or ruby, then you are
really starting to find a new audience. ;-)

BR,
Ulf W

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von "Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)" <ulf.wiger@ericsson.com>:

> Oliver Bandel wrote:
> > Zitat von Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:
> >
> >> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since
> >> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
> >>
> >> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> >
> >
> > Well, I can't see any sky-rocketing there.
> > Also I found no absolute numbers of requests on that page.
>
> Google Trends only shows relative trends, but you can
> try find different references, in order to find your
> bearings:
[...]

Try this one:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=UML%2Cocaml%2Cerlang%2CC%2B%2B%2CSAP&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

So, we are a minority here.

Perl also would be of interest... well, this tool can eat up the whole day ;-)


Ciao,
   Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 01:02:39AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
> 
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> 
> I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a 
> mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X. 
> Hooray! :-)

This is hardly a cause to cheer.  The two languages aren't compatible
in any way which is relevant to the real world, and the libraries are
completely different.  Microsoft could have contributed valuable
changes back to OCaml, but instead decided to produce their own
incompatible clone.

The apparent decision to "cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and
Mac OS X" reminds my suspicious mind of the deal which Microsoft
proposed to Netscape, to divide the browser market with Internet
Explorer on Windows and Netscape on everything else.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[skaller]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:46 +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 01:02:39AM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> > The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
> > Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
> > 
> > http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
> > 
> > I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a 
> > mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X. 
> > Hooray! :-)
> 
> This is hardly a cause to cheer.  The two languages aren't compatible
> in any way which is relevant to the real world, and the libraries are
> completely different.  Microsoft could have contributed valuable
> changes back to OCaml, but instead decided to produce their own
> incompatible clone.

No they couldn't. The Cathedral would never let them.

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 11:00:24PM +1100, skaller wrote:
> No they couldn't. The Cathedral would never let them.

Ridiculous - they could have done a friendly fork of the code.  Code
could have been shared both ways between the OCaml-on-dot-Net and the
OCaml-native compilers.  They chose _not_ to do that.

Anyway, I hope that people considering F# keep in mind what happens
should Microsoft lose interest in it and decide not to continue
supplying or supporting it.  It's crazy to choose a language for any
non-trivial program unless that language is either standardised with
multiple independent vendors, or (better still) open source so you
have options if your supplier stops supporting it.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[skaller]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 12:46 +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 11:00:24PM +1100, skaller wrote:
> > No they couldn't. The Cathedral would never let them.
> 
> Ridiculous - they could have done a friendly fork of the code.  Code
> could have been shared both ways between the OCaml-on-dot-Net and the
> OCaml-native compilers.  

Sure, like code is shared between Ocaml and all the clients that
write code that the Ocaml Team doesn't want.

There's a reason for that: the Ocaml team has limited resources
to maintain their code base, they draw a line around it because
it is primarily a research vehicle.

> They chose _not_ to do that.

I thought MS is a member of the Ocaml consortium.

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Jon Harrop]

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 
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) 
and extended (e.g. Array.map2). Some other aspects such as web services and 
complex numbers are better in F#. For many other things, such as FFTW, I 
write my own shim anyway and there are then no compatibility issues. Writing 
bindings is easier with F# and there are no silly Bigarrays (woohoo!) or 
anything.

> Microsoft could have contributed valuable changes back to OCaml,

As Skaller has said, we cannot contribute to the OCaml code base. Even if you 
fork the codebase you are still bound by its license and you are not allowed 
to redistribute your own modified OCaml distribution.

That is simply not viable for a corporation developing a product. We have 
considered paying to join the CAML Consortium in order to get a more liberal 
license with a view to developing a graphical top-level for OCaml like 
Mathematica's notebook front-end but licensing complications and the 
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 
language (e.g. being unable to supercede module-level definitions in F#) are 
ironed out before the first product release. The remaining differences 
(labelled and optional arguments are different, no structural subtyping 
including polymorphic variants) are sufficiently small that you can already 
port a lot of useful OCaml code to Windows quite easily and then sell it.

From a commercial perspective, it is very nice that you can sell F# DLLs 
easily. I've been wanting to sell Smoke for some time and this is the easiest 
route.

Overall, anyone interested in earning a living from programming in OCaml 
should definitely consider F#. We are already earning a significant amount of 
money from it and I only see that improving...

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Richard Jones]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 04:31:35PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> 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 
> 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) 
> and extended (e.g. Array.map2). Some other aspects such as web services and 
> complex numbers are better in F#. For many other things, such as FFTW, I 
> write my own shim anyway and there are then no compatibility issues. Writing 
> bindings is easier with F# and there are no silly Bigarrays (woohoo!) or 
> anything.

So if I confine myself to a subset of the language and library, and
hope that all the third-party libraries I might use also confine
themselves, then I can compile on F#.  And what do I gain in this
situation?  Not the advantage of using the .Net libraries, nor any
great amount of speed.  The other things you mention are in extlib,
ocamlnet & camlidl respectively.

Sorry, not seeing the advantage yet.  Sounds to me more like embrace
and extend.

> > Microsoft could have contributed valuable changes back to OCaml,
>
> As Skaller has said, we cannot contribute to the OCaml code
> base. Even if you fork the codebase you are still bound by its
> license and you are not allowed to redistribute your own modified
> OCaml distribution.

Nonsense.  You have to distribute as original code + patches, but
there are automated tools that make this simple (eg. RPM and debs both
support precisely this mode of source distribution and make it
completely transparent to the developer, or if you prefer to stick to
source code in directories you can use tools like 'quilt' or any of
the advanced distributed version control systems).

> Overall, anyone interested in earning a living from programming in
> OCaml should definitely consider F#. We are already earning a
> significant amount of money from it and I only see that improving...

Jon, very happy about that.  I hope that Microsoft continue to support
and improve F#.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Peng Zang]

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See, that hits the nail exactly for me.  It does sound like embrace and 
extend.  How many times has MS used this strategy before?  Do we ever learn?

Peng

On Thursday 01 November 2007 14:12, Richard Jones wrote:
> Sorry, not seeing the advantage yet.  Sounds to me more like embrace
> and extend.
>
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Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Jon Harrop]

On Thursday 01 November 2007 18:12, Richard Jones wrote:
> So if I confine myself to a subset of the language and library, and
> hope that all the third-party libraries I might use also confine
> themselves, then I can compile on F#.  And what do I gain in this
> situation?

You gain the ability to take your existing OCaml code, make minor changes and 
sell it to earn money. If you so wish, you can also leverage the skills you 
have learned with OCaml in writing commercial software for the Windows 
platform. These are enormous practical benefits for many OCaml programmers.

Selling general OCaml code is very difficult. There is no reasonable DLL form 
for OCaml. Consequently, after four years we are only now considering selling 
Smoke under source code license.

> > > Microsoft could have contributed valuable changes back to OCaml,
> >
> > As Skaller has said, we cannot contribute to the OCaml code
> > base. Even if you fork the codebase you are still bound by its
> > license and you are not allowed to redistribute your own modified
> > OCaml distribution.
>
> Nonsense.  You have to distribute as original code + patches,

That is not "contributing valuable changes back to OCaml" in any meaningful 
sense.

> but there are automated tools that make this simple (eg. RPM...

Do you really expect Microsoft to adopt the Red Hat Package Manager?

> and debs both support precisely this mode of source distribution and make it
> completely transparent to the developer...

Transparency to developers is not the issue.

Surely you would not expect Microsoft to contribute to gcc or Mono rather than 
starting their own projects?

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Lars Nilsson]

On 11/1/07, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> Surely you would not expect Microsoft to contribute to gcc or Mono rather than
> starting their own projects?

Actually, Microsoft does not have a total aversion to helping out when
the topic is .NET. Case in point would be the Silverlight/Moonlight
.NET layer for browser based applications.

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Sep-05.html

<snip>
* Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight
to ensure that we have a compatible specification. The same test suite
that Microsoft uses for Silverlight.

* Microsoft will give us access to the Silverlight specifications:
details that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is
currently published on the web; and specifications on the 1.1 version
of Silverlight as it is updated.

* Microsoft will make the codecs for video and audio available to
users of Moonlight from their web site. The codecs will be binary
codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web
browser (sorry, those are the rules for the Media codecs[1]).
</snip>

Personally, I'm using F# because it gives me a great platform for
creating applications, not a bare-minimum for creating programs (not a
topic I'm particularly interested in having a flame-war over. My
choices are my own, others will have to deal with theirs).

Lars Nilsson

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von Lars Nilsson <chamaeleon@gmail.com>:
[...]
>
> <snip>
> * Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight
> to ensure that we have a compatible specification. The same test suite
> that Microsoft uses for Silverlight.


There is a special deal between M$ and Novell,
to ensure the hegemony of M$.
This deal excludes others and is against free software.
A farce.

"They give us access to..."
but under what conditions?


Ciao,
   Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Brian Hurt]

Jon Harrop wrote:

>The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
>Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
>
>http://www.google.com/trends?q=f%23%2Cocaml&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
>
>I think this is very good news for the OCaml language as it will now have a 
>mainstream cousin to cover Windows while OCaml covers Linux and Mac OS X. 
>Hooray! :-)
>
>  
>
Personally, I agree with you.  The competition to Ocaml is not F#, or 
SML, or Haskell, or Erlang, it's not learning a functional programming 
language *at all*.  Which is currently the most popular choice by 
programmers by far. 

It's weird, and I don't understand it, but there are a lot of people for 
whom Microsoft is a comfort zone- if Microsoft is doing it, it's worth 
while to learn (and safe to learn).  Leave Microsoft, and you're in the 
howling wilderness with the barbarians.  I agree that this makes no 
sense, but I know way to many of them for this to be coincidence.  So 
Microsoft putting it's seal of approval on a functional language, *any* 
functional language, is a big deal.   This means that a lot of people 
will be willing to look at F# who would never in a million years look at 
Ocaml.  And while the code does not cross over, the programming 
experience (by and large) does.  Someone who knows F# is going to find 
learning Ocaml a breeze.

Short of Microsoft adopting Ocaml themselves (which isn't going to 
happen), this is as good of news as I can imagine for Ocaml.  Don't let 
the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And I find it humorous the number of people on this list looking for the 
cloud associated with this silver lining.

Brian

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[skaller]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:01 -0400, Brian Hurt wrote:

> 
> It's weird, and I don't understand it, but there are a lot of people for 
> whom Microsoft is a comfort zone- 

Huh? What's weird? Where have you been the last 3 decades?
Microsoft put computers on everyone's desktop, just as
Bill Gates said he would.

I guess 99% of all desktops run Windows. Quite a lot of
servers run Windows too.

What's more, strange as it may seem .. programming is
a *commercial* activity. It is done to support commerce
and programmers expect to get paid for what they do
in the day.

Solaris does ok as a server, Linux does well in networking,
and is gaining acceptance as an embedded platform.

It is only recently that anyone challenged MS on the
desktop with anything half-way serious: Apple with OSX.

Judging by how unstable Ubuntu is, it has a long way to
go to be considered a contender.

I don't hold out much hope: the Open Source community is much
more conservative that commercial developers. After all most OS
software is still written in .. C .. long after MS made C++
their standard application language ..

So exactly who is living in a comfort zone?

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Richard Jones]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 03:10:17AM +1100, skaller wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:01 -0400, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > It's weird, and I don't understand it, but there are a lot of people for 
> > whom Microsoft is a comfort zone- 
> 
> Huh? What's weird? Where have you been the last 3 decades?
> Microsoft put computers on everyone's desktop, just as
> Bill Gates said he would.
> 
> I guess 99% of all desktops run Windows. Quite a lot of
> servers run Windows too.

Whew, really trying not to be bated on the Microsoft discussion here,
but that is a _very_ odd view of history.

> I don't hold out much hope: the Open Source community is much
> more conservative that commercial developers. After all most OS
> software is still written in .. C .. long after MS made C++
> their standard application language ..

Open source developers use crap languages, I agree, but switching to
C++ would hardly have improved the situation :-)

FWIW early versions of the Linux kernel could be and sometimes were
compiled as C++ (though still of course written in C) so it's not like
people were unaware of the language or lacked solid implementations at
that point.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[skaller]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 18:05 +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 03:10:17AM +1100, skaller wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:01 -0400, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > > It's weird, and I don't understand it, but there are a lot of people for 
> > > whom Microsoft is a comfort zone- 
> > 
> > Huh? What's weird? Where have you been the last 3 decades?
> > Microsoft put computers on everyone's desktop, just as
> > Bill Gates said he would.
> > 
> > I guess 99% of all desktops run Windows. Quite a lot of
> > servers run Windows too.
> 
> Whew, really trying not to be bated on the Microsoft discussion here,
> but that is a _very_ odd view of history.

This is not history.. it's the current affairs of my life.
I watched it happen, I even helped a bit :)

> Open source developers use crap languages, I agree, but switching to
> C++ would hardly have improved the situation :-)

That's just silliness. C++ is a much better language than C for
application development.

I prefer Ocaml .. but hardly anyone here in Australia has even
heard of it (even companies using *nix).

> FWIW early versions of the Linux kernel could be and sometimes were
> compiled as C++ (though still of course written in C) so it's not like
> people were unaware of the language or lacked solid implementations at
> that point.

Lack of solid implementation was *always* the biggest problem. 
GNU wasn't even a player. It was only recently (last year?) 
that GNU finally released a  C++ compiler (4.X series) that 
could even parse C++ properly.

Don't forget the ISO C++ Standard wasn't ratified until this
millenium .. it's barely 7 years old. I think that is younger
than Linux kernel :)


-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Jon Harrop]

On Friday 02 November 2007 03:01, skaller wrote:
> I prefer Ocaml .. but hardly anyone here in Australia has even
> heard of it (even companies using *nix).

Incidentally, our market research suggests that the US, Germany and Japan are 
the most pioneering countries with respect to modern languages like OCaml. 
The UK is average.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Ulf Wiger (TN/EAB)]

Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Friday 02 November 2007 03:01, skaller wrote:
>> I prefer Ocaml .. but hardly anyone here in Australia has even
>> heard of it (even companies using *nix).
> 
> Incidentally, our market research suggests that the US, Germany and
> Japan are  the most pioneering countries with respect to modern
 > languages like OCaml.
> The UK is average.

I'm curious as to what methods you've used.

While Google Trends only puts Sweden 7th for OCaml and 3rd
on F#, Sweden places 2nd for Haskell and (not surprisingly)
1st for Erlang. (And, FWIW, 7th for LISP.)

Keep in mind that Sweden's population is roughly the same size
as that of London or Tokyo.

Given the quality of Haskell research at Chalmers, the work
on Mozart at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, and
the number of commercial ventures using Erlang in Sweden,
I'd say that the Swedes have shown some pioneering spirit too.

BR,
Ulf W

Language trends / Caml popularity (Re: [Caml-list] Google trends)

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net>:
[...]
>
> That's just silliness. C++ is a much better language than C for
> application development.
[...]

heheh, I met some developers, that talked this way for a long time,
but now told me, that they would prefer C over C++.

For me it was funny, because I never were a friend of C++
and instead looked for Perl, and later FPLs.

And the Java-advocating people, first making a hype out of Java,
after a while of development experience, had also talked less
advocating to this language. For me, this was also a fun, because
they needed some years of Programming Java until they had learned,
what I saw after some days/weeks of exploring.

Heheh.


One thing, that I like in OCaml-programming is,
that I don't have to type so much verbose stuff,
which other languages need.

Java for example: endless typing of class declerations
means a lot of finger-gymnastics.

But maybe this helps to avoid stiffness of the fingers,
when you are 70 ;-)



>
> I prefer Ocaml .. but hardly anyone here in Australia has even
> heard of it (even companies using *nix).
[...]

Even freshly studied computer science-people seldom know OCaml.
But I've spread the word on the Berlin's Linux-Mailinglist for a while,
and infected some of the developers with OCaml (at least that
they know there is a programming language that is called OCaml). :)

At least one of them now uses OCaml for his current project. :)


Ciao,
   Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi,

Though I have no trust whatsoever in Microsoft and I very much doubt
they have any concern at all for OCaml, I still think think that in the
long term, OCaml could benefit from the expected rise of F#.

Foremost, because of the increased mind share for the ML family and FP
in general.  At the moment most developers (even Open Source ones!) still
look at you as a Martian if you say you use OCaml or Haskell.

Many may have even heard of OCaml before (possibly from seeing this
weird name among the top languages of the Computer Language Shootout),
but immediately dismissed it due to the "Martian factor".  With F#
becoming popular and bringing FP and the ML-family into familiar waters,
many Open Source developers are bound to take a more serious look at
that non-Microsoft Linux-friendly F# cousin...

Also, F# seems to be taking the feature-happy approach versus the
more conservative route used by OCaml.  I can easily see F#'s attitude
resulting in a bastardisation of the language, especially if its creators
aren't strong enough to resist marketing pressures.  On the other hand,
if some of these new features prove to be successful in the real world
and integrate well with the core language, then OCaml can only benefit
from borrowing them.

Cheers,
Dario



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Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Florian Weimer]

* Dario Teixeira:

> Though I have no trust whatsoever in Microsoft and I very much doubt
> they have any concern at all for OCaml,

Microsoft used to be a member of the Objective Caml Consortium.  (I
can't check if they still are because the web server appears to be down
at the moment.)

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Florian Weimer]

* Jon Harrop:

> The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since 
> Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:

I've seen no such announcement.  I don't think "Visual Studio
integration" means that it's shipped with the other languages.

Re: [Caml-list] Google trends

[Jon Harrop]

On Friday 02 November 2007 22:45, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Jon Harrop:
> > The number of people searching for OCaml on Google has sky-rocketed since
> > Microsoft's announcement that they are productizing F#:
>
> I've seen no such announcement.  I don't think "Visual Studio
> integration" means that it's shipped with the other languages.

The Corporate VP for the Microsoft Developer Division, S. Somasegar, announced 
the formation of a team to take F# forward on October 17th:

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/10/17/f-a-functional-programming-language.aspx

Don Syme named the first two members, Jomo Fisher and Luke Hoban, of 
Microsoft's Visual C# product group who are now working on the productization 
of F#:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2007/10/17/s-somasegar-on-taking-f-forward.aspx

Microsoft subsequently posted two Redmond job advertisements:

http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=5DF7A6AB-80C5-41CB-9A8D-5B344C33AE1D
http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=B36FFEB2-4C11-4B9C-9B3F-5B23CC604A7B

So the team will have tripled and should increase to 5x its original size 
soon, moving away from Microsoft Research Cambridge UK and to Microsoft 
headquarters in Redmond, USA.

I believe this will place F# alongside Microsoft technologies like XNA, which 
are separate downloads but fully supported products.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e