From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id XAA12690 for caml-red; Sat, 6 Jan 2001 23:21:49 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA21716 for ; Fri, 5 Jan 2001 21:09:03 +0100 (MET) Received: from dalilab.com ([63.203.128.164]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f05K91f16313 for ; Fri, 5 Jan 2001 21:09:01 +0100 (MET) Received: from [63.198.73.142] (HELO kind.kindsoftware.com) by dalilab.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.4b7) with ESMTP id 385840; Fri, 05 Jan 2001 12:08:56 -0800 Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 12:08:55 -0800 From: "Joseph R. Kiniry" Reply-To: "Joseph R. Kiniry" To: OCAML cc: Sven LUTHER , Markus Mottl , Mattias Waldau Subject: Re: JIT-compilation for OCaml? Message-ID: <37650000.978725335@kind.kindsoftware.com> In-Reply-To: <20010105135258.C5122@lambda.u-strasbg.fr> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.0.6b2 (Linux/x86) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Caltech X-Image-Url: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/graphics/jrk-8.99.jpg X-Url: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/ X-Face: 9X:!41!x9hOT+cJU.gb=hXxEm6v)ZczE-':_8mlM-7^G!j%2$QC00w?G "x_1ZnY3[!+gGQD.6%=0EMBt[m|kdKsr*m=3J&r(#is5]J>&eVWNy-h^DrtO_5jES gK6NFKoj%c=+E?*%+\S$Rn7Y|mT(a~1Y{[$MZR[8~(bK[P4]RM2E<"5:n|2Gm!V

7aWw 9+K|b{`Ou,uYaNn(`QDDR wrote: > On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 11:06:09AM -0800, Joseph R. Kiniry wrote: >> I'm sorry, I should have been more explicit. I meant that if you are >> developing and Open Source product and you'd like large scale >> involvement, choosing OCaml as a source language isn't in your best >> interest. While it is true that you are likely to get higher quality >> people involved, the source pool is several orders of magnitude smaller >> than that of Java. > > A, yes, but is it not said that ocaml programs are easier to write and > smaller in size, thus easier to maintain ? would this not compensate the > lower number of available developpers ? You'll get no argument for me on these points. The only maintainence issues with OCaml are from a non-language-expert-business-investor-standpoint: the lack of a large corporation to support tools, the small number of existing expert programmers as a hiring pool, and the standard chicken-and-egg argument ("well no one _else_ is using this language, so it _must_ not be a good choice!"). Note that *I* do not subscribe to the above, but I am only one of many investors/participants. In my other company, as in my research work, I'm the boss, so to speak, so we hear a different tune there. > BTW, about the amiga/TAO stuff ? what is your feeling about the virtual > code or whatever they call it ? i had the feeling that it was very i386 > like, but haven't looked at it very long, but it would make it kind of a > heresy to longtime amiga users ? The "new" Amiga is really a set of technologies built on top of a virtual operating system from the Tao Group . It is a processor agnostic, clean-room OS built from the ground up to be scalable (i.e. run on anything from a wristwatch to a multi-processor server), portable (i.e. runs on over 20 processor architectures), high performance (mostly due to an advanced load-time compiler that does data-flow analysis), and of elegant design (innovative "tools" as a unit of memory management and compilation, asynchronous messaging-based communication throughout, multiprocessor ready from day zero, etc.). I'm really impressed with the Tao codebase. The VP design is the nicest assembly language I have ever used. (I know most Motorola, MIPS, and Intel assembly languages, as a reference). It is object-based(!), has unlimited registers, has a clean and flexible syntax, and (by design) is very efficiently translated to machine code. For the hard-core Amiga user of old (of which I am one, as well as a C=64 and NeXT geek), it is nice to see the name rebirthed with innovative technology, but it is unclear if the team can follow-through with their typically-Amiga grandiose visions (your standard ubiquitous distributed components discovering each other at run-time &c). The Amiga SDK is available for Linux and Windows and comes with extensive documentation, support for several languages (C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, and I've already ported Eiffel), and a whole host of new and innovative technologies. And at $99, it's hard to beat if you are into tinkering with really innovative stuff. Joe -- Joseph R. Kiniry http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/ California Institute of Technology ID 78860581 ICQ 4344804