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 NAA27923; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 13:50:52 +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 NAA27801 for ; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 13:50:51 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from rabelais.socialtools.net (rabelais.socialtools.net [81.2.94.243]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i3PBoojq010561 for ; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 13:50:50 +0200 Received: by rabelais.socialtools.net (Postfix, from userid 108) id EFBF2232DD; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:50:49 +0100 (BST) Received: from socialtools.net (chaucer.socialtools.net [81.2.94.242]) by rabelais.socialtools.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id C6E6C232DB; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:50:48 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <408BA602.5090506@socialtools.net> Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:50:26 +0100 From: Benjamin Geer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113 X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en, fr, it MIME-Version: 1.0 To: james woodyatt Cc: The Caml Trade Subject: Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] The Missing Library References: <20040423185148.GA4434@excelhustler.com> <20040423195206.GA27257@tallman.kefka.frap.net> <20040423202342.GA5962@excelhustler.com> <20040423223611.33ef1c08@haddock.max.fr> <20040423211003.GD6783@excelhustler.com> <20040423213325.GF6783@excelhustler.com> <93448C92-9685-11D8-891D-000A958FF2FE@wetware.com> In-Reply-To: <93448C92-9685-11D8-891D-000A958FF2FE@wetware.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on rabelais.socialtools.net X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.63 X-Miltered: at nez-perce by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 woodyatt:01 joking:01 incompatible:01 glue:01 nightmare:01 irrelevant:01 modules:02 address:96 string:03 string:03 classes:03 classes:03 wrote:03 wrote:03 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk james woodyatt wrote: > On 23 Apr 2004, at 14:33, John Goerzen wrote: >> A plethora of mutually-incompatible modules that duplicate and extend >> standard library features is in nobody's interest. The result will be >> an irrelevant standard library and a fragmented development community. > > Yeah— that was such a huge roadblock to the popularity of the C language. The fact that people often heroically manage to make nearly impossible situations livable is not a reason for creating such situations on purpose. > A vibrant community of people outside INRIA developing independent [even > mutually-incompatible] extensions to the distribution libraries is in > *everybody's* interest. Are you joking? Have you ever tried to write a program using several mutually incompatible libraries? Before C++ had STL, everyone wrote their own string class. Surely you can imagine the resulting contortions when libraries with different string classes had to be used together. If an application programmer constantly has to translate between different libraries' conceptions of string, I/O channel or Internet address, the result is not simply endless annoyance (it is really a pain to write and use that sort of glue code constantly); more importantly, it makes applications unreadable and unmaintainable. I work in a domain where integration of many applications and libraries is essential. With all its faults, at least Java has standard String, InputStream and InetAddress classes. Life without these things would be a nightmare. Ben ------------------- 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