Re: Problems to get larger user base ... (Re: [Caml-list] OCaml's variables)

[oliver <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 09:05:22PM -0700, Norman Hardy wrote:
> 
> On 2013 May 27, at 20:40 , Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp> wrote:
> 
> > Honestly, I think "Part I An introduction to OCaml"
> > from "The OCaml system release 4.00
> > Documentation and user’s manual"
> > at
> > http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/
> > is enough for a start.
> 
> Very good indeed; it sufficed for me to write several useful programs
> 
> > I think you can even skip the Objects chapter in there.
> > And that's only pages 9 to 33 in the PDF version of the document.
> 
> Agreed again; I am not sure of fundamental advantages of objects that you can't get from GADTs.
[...]

GADTs are in OCaml and Haskell.
If people that are used to imperative languages only are the audience
to get a larger user base (not only to get some Haskell programmers to use OCaml),
then GADTs are no argument, because people don't know it.

When talking about OCaml and mention the excellent type system,
people answer to me, that Java also has a good type system
and Python allows duck typing, so they see no advantage in OCaml.
And when talking about abstract datatypes, those people say, Java also has them.

Just some weeks ago I again talked to someone who now switched to Haskell
and was able to convince his boss to use it even at the job for his own tools
and as language for prototyping (porting to Java then later).

He was so extremely happy to see how algebraic data types and pattern matching
can be used together.
When I explained this to him, years ago, he said, that Java will have abstract datatypes
and a strong type system, so why switch to e.g. OCaml?
Even showing examples at the toplevel were not convincing him at that time.

Today he has a very different opinion on Java ;-)

The problem seems to be, that certain aspects of the language
are not obvious to people, even they did have a lot of programming
experience. It's not that they are stupid. They just don't see the
advantages... and I have no clue why. Possibly, because sometimes
the terms in use (like "abstract datatypes") are used for other
languages also.
And the new C++ standard has more and more functional possibilities...
..so why should a C++ programmer switch to OCaml?


Ciao,
   Oliver