From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id WAA22887; Thu, 16 May 2002 22:34:29 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f 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 WAA22877 for ; Thu, 16 May 2002 22:34:29 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from relay.pair.com (relay1.pair.com [209.68.1.20]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id g4GKYNn20034 for ; Thu, 16 May 2002 22:34:28 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (qmail 20057 invoked from network); 16 May 2002 20:34:21 -0000 Received: from adsl-host-sf-228.apexworld.net (HELO checkerlap.d6.com) (66.114.212.228) by relay1.pair.com with SMTP; 16 May 2002 20:34:21 -0000 X-pair-Authenticated: 66.114.212.228 Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20020516132032.02da43a0@mail.d6.com> X-Sender: checker@mail.d6.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 13:28:56 -0700 To: caml-list@inria.fr From: Chris Hecker Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Camlp4/OCaml [was: Generating C stubs] In-Reply-To: <20020516214412.K2924@verdot.inria.fr> References: <86ptzvrif2.fsf@laurelin.dementia.org> <20020515111328.A13106@fr.thalesgroup.com> <193C71C6-67E9-11D6-BB25-0003934491C2@lasmea.univ-bpclermont.fr> <20020515141716.A19272@fr.thalesgroup.com> <20020516070628.GA2334@bik-gmbh.de> <20020516073406.GA1614@fichte.ai.univie.ac.at> <20020516211342.A2924@verdot.inria.fr> <86ptzvrif2.fsf@laurelin.dementia.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I don't want to get into any "human problem" with the inria folks, but a brief technical note is warranted, I think: I believe meta-programming, both at the parsing level that camlp4 does, and taking it farther to being able to meta-program with types, other semantics, at code gen time, and throughout the compiler, is a very important area of research for moving programming languages (and the craft of programming) forward. There seems to be a lot of research on this (camlp4 has been referenced in research papers a couple times), and I hope there's more in the future. I don't care much about the revised syntax (I'd switch if it was deemed "official"), but the meta-programming part of camlp4 should be valued by the team, in my opinion. When I talk to other programmers in my industry about caml, I mention camlp4 as one of the features they should consider when evaluating the language relative to other languages. Chris "I'd rather write programs to write programs than write programs." - Dick Sites ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners