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 SAA30195; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 18:45:45 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id SAA30268 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 18:45:45 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA04437 for ; Fri, 23 Feb 2001 17:33:17 +0100 (MET) Received: from ugly.gaggle ([12.18.157.162]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f1NGXEH26077; Fri, 23 Feb 2001 17:33:15 +0100 (MET) Received: from kenny.gaggle (kenny.gaggle [192.168.168.230]) by ugly.gaggle (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA01331; Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:33:07 -0800 Received: by kenny.gaggle with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id ; Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:33:48 -0800 Message-ID: <6B2758E78474D411958F00D0B78906006A689B@kenny.gaggle> From: Chris Tilt To: "'John Max Skaller '" , "'fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr '" Cc: "'caml-list@inria.fr '" Subject: RE: [Caml-list] RE: OCaml on CLR/JVM? Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:33:47 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk This is a valuable discussion and I appreciate both views on the subject. I am using OCAML in a commercial development with great success and continue to benefit from the excellent work by the research community. The OCAML team and it's contributors have always been friendly and helpful to industry. In addition, we have employed recently a prominent researcher in functional programming. It was very valuable for both our commercial entity and the visiting researcher to share perspectives in a collaborative environment. We gained insight and high quality code while the researcher gained an inside view into the needs and activities of a recent commercial effort where functional programming has strong merit. On the subject of who leads long term research (industry vs. institutions), I am dissapointed with the lack of functional programming exposure taught in undergraduate studies. It is very difficult to find programmers who have any history at all with this approach. Until institutions give equal time to functional, industry will be unaware of it. Further, research funding in that area will suffer. Microsoft, etc., will have no pressure to support it in work such as .NET. To my understanding, there were functional programmers employed on that project, but the pressure from industry is too small to influence the outcome. The process of adopting long-term a functional approach is going to be slow, but can be sped up if institutions produce graduates who have higher expectations of productivity through exposure to modern languages. I will help in any way that I can as I feel much appreciation to this community for our success, however it must start in education. Thank you for listening. -Chris http://www.webcriteria.com -----Original Message----- From: John Max Skaller To: fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Sent: 2/16/01 8:54 AM Subject: Re: [Caml-list] RE: OCaml on CLR/JVM? Fabrice Le Fessant wrote: > There is an HUGE difference between open source and standards. The > first one can always freely evolve, while being used freely by many > users. Standardized ones cannot evolve anymore, or need the company > agreement to be modified. Compatible software will always have to > follow the company new developments, and thus will never be truely > achieved. This is one of the -many- drawbacks of Java. I do not agree, although you seem to be using a wrong example. Standardised systems can and do evolve. The evolution consists of experiment, discussion and consensus formation, followed by implementation by many parties, followed by error reporting (Note I mean errors in the specification: the 'standard') But what you describe as drawbacks of Java (with which I might agree), but Java is _not_ a Standardised language, at least in the sense of being approved by a standards processes within a recognized standards body (such as ISO, IEC, ...). > The problem is that .NET is a commercial product. So, the question is: > should we spend our time porting Ocaml to all new commercial VMs (not > only MS ones, of course) ? Of course not. But .NET is being sponsored by a major player and we can expect a significant number potential of Ocaml users. Please do not forget that programming is principally a commercial activity, and that those of us who indulge -- even part-time -- in research activities, is relatively small (and lucky :-) > One time again, commercial issues have dominated scientific > reasons. Of course: science requires funding: it too is a commercial activity, it must compete, and it doesn't always win the competition. :-) > CLR has been released too early, and will be standardized too > early, while big problems are still remaining: no polymorphism, > object-oriented approach in the bytecode, ... This should have been > discussed first, not in the next version ! I agree. > Of course, it won't change my mind. I will always think that public > research and commercial research have different goals... Of course they do, because they differ in their funding models. Generally, public institutions can be more long sighted than commercial ones, whereas commercial ones have more dynamic growth patterns and so must be more short-sighted. However, one should be rightly annoyed at larger corporations, since they rival public institutions in size and stability, but seem still to lack the capacity for long term research. And perhaps this is partly the fault of the public institutions for remaining too aloof from the commerical world. I believe this creates a tension in which the commercial players put pressure on public institutions (like ISO, academia), for a more 'commerical' approach. And perhaps one could ask how to best direct pressure on those companies, to take a more long sighted view in return, and work with the public intitutions better in the area of research. The only way I know how to do this is for those who see commerical merit in research to work in and for the commercial entities, since they are organisations of people too. :-) To put this argument another way: we will do better to convince the commercial programmers of the world that the Ocaml way is better if it is actually available on the platform they use to implement commercial solutions. -- 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 ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr. Archives: http://caml.inria.fr ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr. Archives: http://caml.inria.fr