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 3D869BBC1 for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:11:54 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: ApoEAH8vDEjAXQIn/2dsb2JhbACqIQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,689,1199660400"; d="scan'208";a="11196504" Received: from concorde.inria.fr ([192.93.2.39]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 21 Apr 2008 15:11:54 +0200 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m3LDBrsJ030631 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=OK) for ; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:11:53 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: At8BAEIvDEhQRFuwiGdsb2JhbACRVwEBAQ8mmBE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,689,1199660400"; d="scan'208";a="25270137" Received: from furbychan.cocan.org ([80.68.91.176]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 21 Apr 2008 15:11:53 +0200 Received: from rich by furbychan.cocan.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1JnvoG-0004T3-0y for caml-list@inria.fr; Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:11:52 +0100 Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:11:51 +0100 To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] The closing gap (warning: long, inflammatory rant) Message-ID: <20080421131151.GA16777@annexia.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) From: Richard Jones X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 480C9299.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; 0200,:01 berke:01 durak:01 niches:01 ocaml:01 compilation:01 model:01 ocaml:01 compilation:01 distro:01 apt-get:01 wrote:01 wrote:01 typing:01 caml-list:01 On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 02:27:36PM +0200, Berke Durak wrote: > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 1:17 PM, Jon Harrop 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