Re: [Caml-list] caml trading

[Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>]

On Monday 16 March 2009 17:01:15 aditya siram wrote:
> Thanks for this awesome video! I was unaware that the Caml compiler did not
> optimize source code before generating native code. Now I am a little less
> afraid to study the actual compiler!

The OCaml compilers are remarkably comprehensible. I attribute that to the 
OCaml developers at INRIA discarding implementations of ideas that turned out 
to be rubbish rather than accumulating such cruft. So there is very little 
irrelevant baggage in there compared to many other compilers.

> Your point about a lack of  GUI libraries is great - however it seems as
> though they are not as important as they once were. The amazing javascript
> toolkits [1] that have sprung up over the last year (along with the Ocsigen
> and OBrower project [2]) have filled most of that vaccum.
>
> As long as there are libraries that provide an easy way to hook up with a
> web client is there still a compelling reason to develop native GUI
> toolkits?

Performance. If you want to do OpenGL-based visualization then you at least 
need a fast route from the high-level data you are visualizing through to a 
low-level representation (e.g. tesselations) down to the C FFI to the OGL 
driver. Javascript is, of course, not up to the task. OCaml is much better 
but there is still room for improvement.

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