Re: [Caml-list] Some Clarifications

[Robert Morelli <morelli@cs.utah.edu>]

What you've quoted here is a direct and emphatic statement that what I
wanted to discuss is something I believe is a technical issue,  not a
conspiracy of large corporations, not an attack on a poster's
credibility,  not a claim that some broadly useful language is
horrendously bad,  not rhetorical deceptions,  not advocacy,  not ad
hominem diversions.  You didn't include it in your quote,  but I also
pointed out that functional programmers are prone to a counterproductive
form of advocacy and focus on low level issues and that they have
generally been unsuccessful at providing practical documentation.  I do
lament that,  and it is directly relevant to the original poster's
question,  but I primarily raised that point to underline that I believe
the lack of a "theory" of large scale design issues is not a result of
it.

You may disagree with me,  and you may find my statements provocative or
unsettling,  but you cannot claim that I attempted to use a game of
rhetorical deception,  advocacy,  or ad hominem diversions.

One point which might help clarify my attitude,  is that my hostility is
to advocacy on this mailing list,  not to any particular language or
paradigm.  Advocates of OCaml might misinterpret my hostility to
advocacy as a hostility to OCaml.  That would be quite off the mark,
but I do not see a good justification for further elaborating my
personal attitudes here.


Paul Snively wrote:
> On Jul 23, 2005, at 5:04 PM, Robert Morelli wrote:
> 
>> To be entirely frank,  I am put off by the style of your comments.
> 
> 
> Considering that you're the one who joined the thread by saying:
> 
> "This seems as good a time as any to delurk and jump on a soap box"  and 
> "The FP paradigm is intrinsically poorly adapted to the kind of  large 
> scale design concepts that concern most programmers.  Object  oriented 
> programming is a much better match,  not because of a  conspiracy of 
> commercial giants in the software tool business,  but  because of 
> intrinsic technical reasons.  Functional programming is a  niche 
> technology ideally suited to simple domains like language tools  and 
> formal methods.  It does not have much to say about complicated  
> systems," I have to say that complaining about the style of others'  
> comments here takes considerably bigger brass balls than I possess.  
> Congratulations.
> 
> Best regards,
> Paul Snively