From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72C6CBBAF for ; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:07:26 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Av4FAEqr7Exc8w3B/2dsb2JhbACUcY53vkCFRwQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.59,248,1288566000"; d="scan'208";a="80869176" Received: from dangi.happyleptic.org (HELO dangi) ([92.243.13.193]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/AES256-SHA; 24 Nov 2010 15:07:17 +0100 Received: from extranet.securactive.org ([82.234.213.170] helo=ccellier.rd.securactive.lan) by dangi with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PLG0D-000205-1h for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:07:17 +0100 Received: from rixed by ccellier.rd.securactive.lan with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1PLG0B-0001pm-3O for caml-list@yquem.inria.fr; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:07:15 +0100 Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:07:15 +0100 From: Cedric Cellier To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Is OCaml fast? Message-ID: <20101124140715.GA6863@securactive.net> Mail-Followup-To: Cedric Cellier , caml-list@yquem.inria.fr References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 criticizing:01 non-trivial:01 mls:01 haskell:01 ocaml:01 syntax:01 webpages:98 aps:98 caml-list:01 ghc:01 expressive:01 data:02 lisp:02 structures:02 I was in a similar position than yours two years ago, looking for a higher level language than C to gain some expressive power but without willing to sacrifice C's speed. I consulted a lot of benchmarks from the shootout, and also many webpages similar to the one you refer to, some praising a language some criticizing it. The various contenders of the shootout seamed to fall in three categories : languages that are fast compared to C, but does not reduce much the size of the source code (C++, java, APS...), languages that allow concise manipulations of non-trivial data structures (Lisps, MLs, Haskells), and non-compiled languages that I never considered adopting. I eliminated Haskell because GHC was only usable on x86 architecture at that time, so I tried various Lisp at first. Then a friend pointed me to Ocaml since, according to him, it's easier to cross the gap between C and Ocaml than between C and anything else. I thus finally tried Ocaml and, despite my initial apprehensions, I felt myself comfortable with its syntax after am couple of days. I am now using it whenever I have the choice to, after many years of C, mixing with C or ASM when necessary (which is quite easy), because I feel it's pleasant to use, and that I have still many things to learn from it, without the bad feeling to waste CPU cycles along the way. I like to think that if yon consider only speed and terseness of the code, Ocaml is still amongst the top languages ; probably not the #1 as stated by the (quite old) webpage you pointed to, but still excellent.