Re: [Caml-list] The closing gap (warning: long, inflammatory rant)

[Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 02:27:36PM +0200, Berke Durak wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> > Quad cores are already the norm.
> >
> > An *eight* core Dell Precision T7400 now costs only £1,171. Our desktop
> > machines will be replaced with these eight core machines before the end of
> > this year.
> 
> Well it's worse than what I thought then.

Your threaded code is going to look really stupid when you have NUMA
machines with dozens of cores.  Why are we optimizing for a case (SMP)
which will only be around for a few years.  Arguably SMP isn't even
around now ... the AMD machine on which I'm typing this is firmly NUMA
with a good 10% penalty for accessing memory owned by the other
socket.

> A concurrent GC should be developed.  But I think you can compete in
> some "niches" without a concurrent GC.

Why should a concurrent GC be developed?  Threaded code is a nightmare
to write & debug, and it's only convenient for lazy programmers who
can't be bothered to think in advance about how they want to share
data.  OCaml supports fork, event channels & shared memory right now
(and has done for years) so there is no penalty to writing it
properly.

[...]
> Compilation and linking are extremely painful things, especially when you
> want to start to learn a new language
> in good faith.  Java has a relatively good packaging/loading model which is
> part of its success.  Ocaml is
> terrible at this.

Huh?  OCaml scripts work perfectly well, they're compiled when you run
them.  I use them all the time.

[...]
> So there is a gap to be filled, and Ocaml could be the next fashionable web
> programming language if we fix
> a few things or two:
> - Compilation and package headache,
> - Missing batteries.

What distro are you using?  Obviously one where you can't just
apt-get / yum install / godi whatever all the libraries and support
software you need.  There is no "package headache" over in Debian /
Fedora / GODI at all.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat