From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBA52BBAF for ; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:54:43 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AkIDAF8pL0uCcUBTaGdsb2JhbACECpRyglINBQYKBxOsCo4vgS+CLVIE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.47,431,1257116400"; d="scan'208";a="52604374" Received: from sigma957.cis.mcmaster.ca ([130.113.64.83]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 21 Dec 2009 16:54:35 +0100 Received: from Dura7.UTS.McMaster.CA (dura7.UTS.mcmaster.ca [130.113.196.62]) by sigma957.cis.mcmaster.ca (8.13.7/8.13.7) with ESMTP id nBLFkj5r011676; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:46:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from cgpsrv2.cis.mcmaster.ca (univmail.CIS.McMaster.CA [130.113.64.46]) by Dura7.UTS.McMaster.CA (8.13.7/8.13.7) with ESMTP id nBLFkPiv027123; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:46:25 -0500 Received: from [99.235.230.129] (account carette@univmail.cis.mcmaster.ca HELO [192.168.1.105]) by cgpsrv2.cis.mcmaster.ca (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.2.12) with ESMTPSA id 283049205; Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:46:26 -0500 Message-ID: <4B2F9855.9050308@mcmaster.ca> Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:46:29 -0500 From: Jacques Carette Organization: McMaster University User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dario Teixeira Cc: Philip , Keyan , caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] general question, was Re: OCaml is broken References: <785000.40916.qm@web111507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <785000.40916.qm@web111507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-PMX-Version-Mac: 5.5.5.374460, Antispam-Engine: 2.7.1.369594, Antispam-Data: 2009.12.21.153620 X-PerlMx-Spam: Gauge=IIIIIIII, Probability=8%, Report=' BODY_SIZE_1400_1499 0, BODY_SIZE_2000_LESS 0, BODY_SIZE_5000_LESS 0, BODY_SIZE_7000_LESS 0, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ 0, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT 0, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __MOZILLA_MSGID 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __USER_AGENT 0' X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 ocaml:01 gcc:01 metaocaml:01 haskell:01 survives:98 voted:98 wrote:01 wrote:01 partial:01 caml-list:01 implemented:02 mcmaster:02 jacques:03 jacques:03 I agree with most of what Dario Teixeira wrote, except for one small quibble: Dario Teixeira wrote: > Last but not least, Ocaml plays a central role in multiple INRIA > projects, which means its creators have all the reason to continue > maintaining it and improving it for the foreseeable future (and there's > some interesting goodies in the upcoming 3.12 release, for example). > Actually, this gives these projects an incentive to insure that Ocaml survives, which gives an incentive for some 'maintenance engineers' to be kept on-staff to insure that Ocaml does not bit-rot. This gives only quite partial incentive to a team of researchers (the creators of Ocaml) to do maintenance (as that is usually not research, thus not the kind of work of interest to researchers). And entropy is a real problem -- Ocaml is now quite mature, which means that radical changes are well nigh impossible; this is a serious disincentive for researchers. End of quibble. Personally, I would really really want to see a 4.00 release which really warrants that name. The 3.XX line can be maintained for a few more years while people switch, in the same way gcc did this. In any case, I have nevertheless voted with my time and effort: I have 1 large project being implemented in Ocaml, 3 medium ones in metaocaml, although I must admit that I have some 'research' code in Haskell (and in Maple, but that's another story). Jacques