Re: JIT-compilation for OCaml?

[John Max Skaller <skaller@ozemail.com.au>]

Markus Mottl wrote:

> > If Ocaml had a decent GUI API that worked on just X- and MS- Windows
> > systems, it would be a killer. 

> I expected that people would mention GUI-libraries, but I don't write
> GUIs. Is this really everything people are missing?

	Actually, no, there are some other significant
problems (apart from education) with Ocaml. 

	1. The lack of dynamic loading virtually wipes it out 
as a serious commercial language (IMHO). 
This can probably be fixed.

	2. The difficulty of interfacing to existing
C/C++ code. This probably cannot be fixed. [For example,
consider the sheer volume of work required to map GTK
to Ocaml]

	There are, of course, many other problems, such as
the lack of intermodule recursion, but all languages have
various difficulties which can usually either be fixed
or worked around. 

	But clearly the biggest problem is one of education,
both of the virtues of functional programming, and the details
of the ocaml syntax/semantics (much of which escapes me, after
several years usage).

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
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