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=none 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 7B19CBB84 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:08:01 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqUCAHoUo0jUnw4RjWdsb2JhbACCLI9HAQEBAQcHBgcTpQKBVQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.32,204,1217800800"; d="scan'208";a="16101532" Received: from pih-relay04.plus.net ([212.159.14.17]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/AES256-SHA; 14 Aug 2008 02:08:01 +0200 Received: from [90.198.246.64] (helo=beast.local) by pih-relay04.plus.net with esmtpa (Exim) id 1KTQNk-0005Ky-LN for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:08:00 +0100 From: Jon Harrop Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Haskell vs OCaml Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:09:03 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.9 References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200808140109.03860.jon@ffconsultancy.com> X-Plusnet-Relay: 9461c9a862e65431fa49d7cc5c3ff48f X-Spam: no; 0.00; haskell:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 haskell:01 predictable:01 camlp:01 functors:01 variants:01 haskell's:01 haskell's:01 advocates:01 afaik:01 high-profile:98 fakes:98 frog:98 On Wednesday 13 August 2008 13:48:45 circ ular wrote: > What are the advantages/disadvantages when comparing OCaml to Haskell? Techically, predictable performance, high performance on x64, tools like camlp4 and language features including records, functors, polymorphic variants and structurally-typed objects are probably the main advantages of OCaml over Haskell. Non-technically, OCaml has more well-tested libraries, more practical books (e.g. my own), more high-profile open source projects (e.g. FFTW has millions of users): http://ocamlnews.blogspot.com/2007/12/top-10-most-popular-ocaml-programs.html http://haskell-news.blogspot.com/2008/01/top-10-most-popular-haskell-programs.html and is much more widely used in industry. There are far more practically-minded people in the OCaml community and that is reflected in the much larger number of commercial products that use OCaml. Tangentially, OCaml has a successful relative in F# whereas Haskell's close relatives are extinct. I did extensive research on all of the most popular functional languages last year, including Haskell. In case you are trying to do something similar, I'll warn you that almost all of the examples of Haskell's use in industry are fakes, e.g. companies that have no products, companies that have one product that never used Haskell, companies that happen to have two Haskell advocates working for them out of 150 developers, companies where one employee once did a preliminary Haskell program but nothing since and, finally, plain old spam where companies that have never had anything to do with Haskell have hijacked the Haskell site to advertise on-line only to be hailed as a "real world" example of Haskell in industry by its proponents. I was rather baffled when I discovered this and have never seen behaviour like it. Haskell also has some advantages over OCaml, of course, but you should probably ask the Haskell community to explain them. I consider them all to be untested because nobody has ever done anything significant using Haskell AFAIK. -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e