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 KAA11231 for caml-red; Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:01:32 +0100 (MET) Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA16061 for ; Tue, 9 Jan 2001 07:42:31 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost.localdomain (jimbo108.zip.com.au [202.7.88.108]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f096gSL12360 for ; Tue, 9 Jan 2001 07:42:29 +0100 (MET) Received: from ozemail.com.au (IDENT:root@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA30505; Tue, 9 Jan 2001 17:40:28 +1100 Message-ID: <3A5AB25C.59E90B65@ozemail.com.au> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 17:40:28 +1100 From: John Max Skaller X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12-20 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Markus Mottl CC: Mattias Waldau , OCAML Subject: Re: JIT-compilation for OCaml? References: <20010102170753.A4018@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <20010102203051.A18481@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <3A534A99.93817EA9@ozemail.com.au> <20010103185023.A29666@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr 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 10/1 Toxteth Rd Glebe NSW 2037 Australia voice: 61-2-9660-0850 checkout Vyper http://Vyper.sourceforge.net download Interscript http://Interscript.sourceforge.net