Re: [Caml-list] What is a future of ocaml?

[Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 01:44:40PM +0000, Dawid Toton wrote:
> Is there any hope for a grand 'OCaml 4' release that would iron out the 
> last ugly spots left in the language with some breaking changes?

No no no, this is a really bad idea for a few reasons.

(1) Perl 6 and Python 3.  Python 3 is even very conservative (compared
to the ongoing complete rewrite that is Perl 6), but even there just
about no one is going to move to Python 3 in the immediate future
because it requires maintaining two incompatible versions of all your
code.  The OCaml community has far fewer resources available than the
Perl and Python communities, and doesn't need extra make-work.

(2) Everyone would need to agree on what the new language would look
like, what features it would and wouldn't have.  Good luck with that.

(3) The language is fine as it is, and many syntactic changes can be
made using camlp4 anyway and don't require any changes to the
compiler.

It's the slow, boring, steady work that's going to pay off.

Make the tools better.  Write more documentation and tutorials.  Fix
the website[*].  Mirror much more content on mirror.ocamlcore.org
and/or set up a CPAN-like repository of tarballs.  Make the mega-
releases for package-challenged beginners (what's happening to
Batteries?)  Make GODI work really well on Windows.  Package more
stuff in MacPorts ...

Rich.

[*] INRIA: Are you interested in handling control of http://ocaml.org
to OcamlCore?  I think we (Red Hat) can kick in some money to pay a
graphic designer and a user interface specialist to work on a good
looking site that appeals to beginners and directs people to the
necessary resources.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat