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=0.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,HTML_MESSAGE 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 CA444BBAF for ; Mon, 1 Sep 2008 19:48:26 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AgQCAOvHu0jRVciqlGdsb2JhbACCNDCPJj4BAQEBCQMKBxEDoF6BaQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.32,308,1217800800"; d="scan'208";a="16691916" Received: from wf-out-1314.google.com ([209.85.200.170]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 01 Sep 2008 19:48:25 +0200 Received: by wf-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id 24so2041343wfg.15 for ; Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:48:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.142.43.7 with SMTP id q7mr2202225wfq.11.1220291303645; Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:48:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.143.165.3 with HTTP; Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:48:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <28fa90930809011048l60d1fb7fmc31a11e3f69c3f92@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:48:23 -0700 From: "Luca de Alfaro" To: peng.zang@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Ocaml, a practical functional language? Cc: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr, "circ ular" In-Reply-To: <200809011237.00069.peng.zang@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_36919_24481173.1220291303637" References: <200809011237.00069.peng.zang@gmail.com> X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 ocaml:01 compiler:01 largish:01 debugger:01 hash:01 haskell:01 haskell:01 abstraction:01 overkill:01 statically:01 libs:01 workarounds:01 emacs:01 tuareg:01 ------=_Part_36919_24481173.1220291303637 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I also cast my vote for Ocaml. Ocaml is the best compromise between pleasure of coding, speed of code, the compiler working for you (strong type checking = most bugs found at compile time). Memory management is much better than in Python. I particularly favor Ocaml for largish projects. There, the type system helps you gain confidence that the part of the system that you did not touch in a change (typically, 99%) is unaffected by the change. This makes debugging and development much easier and painless. I certainly would not imagine any more developing in languages where any change may break far-away things without warning. And where else can you find a debugger that can execute code (or give you the impression it does) backwards? This is invaluable when trying to find things like where an exception is thrown: you simply run the code until it exits throwing the exception, then you back off a few steps until you find what is throwing the exception and why. C programmers grappling with Segmentation Faults are very surprised to see this style of debugging! And even though Ocaml was born as a functional language, I am happy using it even for code that has to access databases and interact with the web; see http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/WikiTrust . The one drawback of Ocaml is that it is harder to find developers for it. But this can be an advantage as well: since the barrier to entry is slightly higher, a typical Ocaml programmer tends to be a better programmer than a typical perl or C++ programmer, in my limited experience. Luca On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Peng Zang wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > On Saturday 30 August 2008 03:50:30 pm circ ular wrote: > > I have tried a lot of languages but never really felt 100% satisfied. > > I really like Python, it makes me very productive but Iwant something > > a little more functionally oriented plus a static(optionally declared) > > typesystem. > > > > I tried Haskell and I really like it but I find it hard to get used to > > some things(like no destructive updates of datastructures outside the > > IO Monad). > > Ocaml seems a little bit more practical and it is aslo very fast(well > > haskell is too). > > > > tried lisp at first but libraries and documentation just werent up to > > standards there either. > > > > so far Pytho is the best Ive found (for me) but still isn't satisfied. > > > > could ocaml be what I look for? > > I think OCaml is what you are looking for. I went through a similar search > for a comfortable language. My order was a bit different, lisp first, then > python, then OCaml, then played a bit with Haskell but am sticking with > OCaml. > > I find OCaml to be a great compromise. Haskell is cool, but it forces you > to > do things in certain ways and use a lot of abstraction which often seems > overkill, making simple things much harder than they should be. I really > like how easy things are in Python but large programs I find are impossible > to maintain because it's not statically typed (it's also slow.. but that > might have been ok). Lisp is really great with what you can do and many > simple things are simple, but it doesn't have the scaffolding to let you > scale up to big stuff (missing libs and stuff). OCaml has been great. It > has its drawbacks and yucky corner cases like all languages. Overall > though, > it's been good and I've been able to find reasonable workarounds for things > I > don't like. I encourage you to give it a serious try. > > There's a great book on OCaml here: > > http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs134/cs134b/book.pdf > > The best emacs mode for ocaml is tuareg mode here: > > http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~acohen/tuareg/ > > I also write some additional on top of tuareg mode to be more like the > SLIME > mode for lisp but it's alpha (mostly because I wrote it for myself and > packaging it and making robust is a lot of work that I'm too busy to > handle) > so I don't really recommend it yet. > > Peng > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFIvBosfIRcEFL/JewRAv4kAJ40DMoR1GZd1LagWMwR1umbEglLVwCfaMoP > F9jaCP+f2iJvqU/ZxVs+Czs= > =k9FZ > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management: > http://yquem.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/caml-list > Archives: http://caml.inria.fr > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > ------=_Part_36919_24481173.1220291303637 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline
I also cast my vote for Ocaml.
Ocaml is the best compromise between pleasure of coding, speed of code, the compiler working for you (strong type checking = most bugs found at compile time).  Memory management is much better than in Python.
I particularly favor Ocaml for largish projects.  There, the type system helps you gain confidence that the part of the system that you did not touch in a change (typically, 99%) is unaffected by the change.  This makes debugging and development much easier and painless.  I certainly would not imagine any more developing in languages where any change may break far-away things without warning.

And where else can you find a debugger that can execute code (or give you the impression it does) backwards? 
This is invaluable when trying to find things like where an exception is thrown: you simply run the code until it exits throwing the exception, then you back off a few steps until you find what is throwing the exception and why.  C programmers grappling with Segmentation Faults are very surprised to see this style of debugging!
And even though Ocaml was born as a functional language, I am happy using it even for code that has to access databases and interact with the web; see http://trust.cse.ucsc.edu/WikiTrust .

The one drawback of Ocaml is that it is harder to find developers for it.  But this can be an advantage as well: since the barrier to entry is slightly higher, a typical Ocaml programmer tends to be a better programmer than a typical perl or C++ programmer, in my limited experience.

Luca

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Peng Zang <peng.zang@gmail.com> wrote:
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Hash: SHA1


On Saturday 30 August 2008 03:50:30 pm circ ular wrote:
> I have tried a lot of languages but never really felt 100% satisfied.
> I really like Python, it makes me very productive but Iwant something
> a little more functionally oriented plus a static(optionally declared)
> typesystem.
>
> I tried Haskell and I really like it but I find it hard to get used to
> some things(like no destructive updates of datastructures outside the
> IO Monad).
> Ocaml seems a little bit more practical and it is aslo very fast(well
> haskell is too).
>
> tried lisp at first but libraries and documentation just werent up to
> standards there either.
>
> so far Pytho is the best Ive found (for me) but still isn't satisfied.
>
> could ocaml be what I look for?

I think OCaml is what you are looking for.  I went through a similar search
for a comfortable language.  My order was a bit different, lisp first, then
python, then OCaml, then played a bit with Haskell but am sticking with
OCaml.

I find OCaml to be a great compromise.  Haskell is cool, but it forces you to
do things in certain ways and use a lot of abstraction which often seems
overkill, making simple things much harder than they should be.  I really
like how easy things are in Python but large programs I find are impossible
to maintain because it's not statically typed (it's also slow.. but that
might have been ok).  Lisp is really great with what you can do and many
simple things are simple, but it doesn't have the scaffolding to let you
scale up to big stuff (missing libs and stuff).  OCaml has been great.  It
has its drawbacks and yucky corner cases like all languages.  Overall though,
it's been good and I've been able to find reasonable workarounds for things I
don't like.  I encourage you to give it a serious try.

There's a great book on OCaml here:

 http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs134/cs134b/book.pdf

The best emacs mode for ocaml is tuareg mode here:

 http://www-rocq.inria.fr/~acohen/tuareg/

I also write some additional on top of tuareg mode to be more like the SLIME
mode for lisp but it's alpha (mostly because I wrote it for myself and
packaging it and making robust is a lot of work that I'm too busy to handle)
so I don't really recommend it yet.

Peng
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