RE: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

RE: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Toby Moth]

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Or else we could retaliate with
a picture of an oyster with a big fat
Pe(a)rl inside.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel de Rauglaudre [mailto:daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr]
Sent: 29 March 2001 15:05
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)


> Maybe we should change the name of the language to "Objective
> Percheron" to match the book cover :-)

I heard somebody telling that my software was written in OCalm
(sounds in French as "calm water"). Therefore I suggest: a whale.

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Arturo Borquez]

On Fri, 23 March 2001, "Mattias Waldau" wrote:

> 
> Something we should think about also for Ocaml
> 
> http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
> 
> "What can be done about this? First and foremost the Haskell community must
> make a standard distribution of Haskell that contains enough libraries to be
> useful. That should include a regular expression library, an Internet
> protocol library, a library for dealing with standard internet data and
> encoding, a crypto library, a multimedia library and a GUI library.
> 
> Next, the Haskell community must step out of its research circles and start
> publicizing Haskell to the practicing programmers. Write articles in DDJ and
> similar publications. Publish real-world programs written in Haskell."
> 
> Most of this is also relevant for Ocaml, for example there are
> crypto libraries and XML-support (for example PXP, which require wlex, which
> is a hazzle).
> 
Hi Mattias:
As I am part of the 'real world programmers' from the begining I have being trying to put OCaml to work in trivial but 'real world apps' with great success. I must recognize that I am not so skilled in the language to participate in the theoric-forum, but yet I have coded some apps (server services) to my company to show the reliability of OCaml, and we are all agree that is a great language. But a great language to be successful and honour the great effort done by the authors must be promoted actively outside the research environment. I believe that lots of programmers not use OCaml because they are unaware about its existence. How to do it? The strategy and decision is to be made by INRIA and/or Caml Consortuim. Personaly I would like to see OCaml world wide spreaded playing in the 'great leages'.    


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Vijay Chakravarthy]

We are also trying to use Ocaml out here, mainly for prototyping purposes
(at least thats the way I'll introduce it to the rest of the org.)
Once they find that rewriting the prototypes in java takes 10 times the
effort.....
The main difficulties we have faced have been --
a) Education - Out here even for people skilled in scheme and some other
functional languages, it is challenging to learn ocaml. My
team found it easier to learn erlang, for example. However, people love the
strong type checking, and the fact that if it compiles its
likely to run correctly... The english translation of the horse book should
help.
b) As I mentioned in a previous message, support for Windows is weak. Many
of us use Linux for development, but our sales team,
which would show off the demos and prototypes, has windows laptops.
Therefore the need to show off web apps on windows.
Difficulties in building important packages (like pxp) on windows, plus the
need to write even simple things like web servers, and
database interfaces etc is a painful situation. With some difficulty we
could compile many of the packages, but its not as smooth
as it should be. Also fork based web server/services (such as in the geneweb
distribution) will not work on windows. A select based
single threaded web server would be really useful (By web server I am not
referring necessarily to a full fledged web server, but rather
services that are accessible through a http interface)
c) Package availability is fragmented. I have a good idea of various
packages etc, but to a newcomer, there is no single place to
track down code examples. Plus larger packages like Ensemble, Geneweb etc
contain modules that would be useful in general, but
that is visible only when one peruses the source code of such packages.

On the other hand, the language and the libraries are excellent. Plus
functional programming languages are IDEAL for the type
of work we do, which is in the enterprise software space. Things like bills
of materials, available to promise engines etc are quite
entertaining to deal with in the context of functional languages, and
especially ocaml.

Vijay

BTW, I dont know if this is the right place for this, but are there any
people interested in ocaml programming out here in the
San Francisco area? Or alternatively, if there are people on this list
skilled in ocaml and interested in some sort of remote contract
programming arrangement, please send me email.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Arturo Borquez" <aborquez@altavista.com>
To: <mattias.waldau@abc.se>
Cc: <caml-list@inria.fr>
Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)


> On Fri, 23 March 2001, "Mattias Waldau" wrote:
>
> >
> > Something we should think about also for Ocaml
> >
> > http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm
> >
> > "What can be done about this? First and foremost the Haskell community
must
> > make a standard distribution of Haskell that contains enough libraries
to be
> > useful. That should include a regular expression library, an Internet
> > protocol library, a library for dealing with standard internet data and
> > encoding, a crypto library, a multimedia library and a GUI library.
> >
> > Next, the Haskell community must step out of its research circles and
start
> > publicizing Haskell to the practicing programmers. Write articles in DDJ
and
> > similar publications. Publish real-world programs written in Haskell."
> >
> > Most of this is also relevant for Ocaml, for example there are
> > crypto libraries and XML-support (for example PXP, which require wlex,
which
> > is a hazzle).
> >
> Hi Mattias:
> As I am part of the 'real world programmers' from the begining I have
being trying to put OCaml to work in trivial but 'real world apps' with
great success. I must recognize that I am not so skilled in the language to
participate in the theoric-forum, but yet I have coded some apps (server
services) to my company to show the reliability of OCaml, and we are all
agree that is a great language. But a great language to be successful and
honour the great effort done by the authors must be promoted actively
outside the research environment. I believe that lots of programmers not use
OCaml because they are unaware about its existence. How to do it? The
strategy and decision is to be made by INRIA and/or Caml Consortuim.
Personaly I would like to see OCaml world wide spreaded playing in the
'great leages'.
>
>
> Find the best deals on the web at AltaVista Shopping!
> http://www.shopping.altavista.com
> -------------------
> To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr.  Archives:
http://caml.inria.fr

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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Vijay Chakravarthy wrote:
> We are also trying to use Ocaml out here, mainly for prototyping purposes
> (at least thats the way I'll introduce it to the rest of the org.)
> Once they find that rewriting the prototypes in java takes 10 times the
> effort.....

And runs at one tenth the speed :-). I laughed at this since one of my
Caml-hating colleagues recently suggested to my manager (who reads
this list :) that we rewrite some Java code in a low level language like C 
or OCaml (!) for speed. 

> The main difficulties we have faced have been --
> a) Education - Out here even for people skilled in scheme and some other
> functional languages, it is challenging to learn ocaml. 

What have the issues been? I hate to mention this again (and again, ...) but 
I find that beginners and non-experts stumble over syntax a lot. Now, it is 
clear that Daniel De Rauglaudre is too shy and modest to mention his Revised 
syntax available with CamlP4. If your people have syntax problems (they do 
go away with familiarity IME) then check it out. 

> My team found it easier to learn erlang, for example. However, people 
> love the strong type checking, and the fact that if it compiles its
> likely to run correctly... The english translation of the horse book should
> help.

Yes, how is that coming? I hope that ugly horse can get replaced by a
beautiful dromedary.

> b) As I mentioned in a previous message, support for Windows is weak. Many

This might be the kind of thing that the Consortium can help with. If
enough members want Windows they can kick in for an extensive thin binding 
to Windows services. 

> c) Package availability is fragmented. I have a good idea of various
> packages etc, but to a newcomer, there is no single place to
> track down code examples. Plus larger packages like Ensemble, Geneweb etc
> contain modules that would be useful in general, but
> that is visible only when one peruses the source code of such packages.

Two issues there. First is that some tool like findlib or the Python distutils 
should be part of the toolset. Second is that a big library structure like 
the SML Basis library would be helpful. 

> On the other hand, the language and the libraries are excellent. 

Agreed. 

> Plus functional programming languages are IDEAL for the type
> of work we do, which is in the enterprise software space.

I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?

> BTW, I dont know if this is the right place for this, but are there any
> people interested in ocaml programming out here in the
> San Francisco area? 

Santa Clara (which hasn't had any blackouts!) area but there was an
attempt at a NoCal OCaml users meeting. Maybe the participants can tell
you how it went. It's great to hear that the number of industrial OCaml 
programmers is growing!

-- Brian

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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Vijay Chakravarthy]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Rogoff" <bpr@best.com>
To: "Vijay Chakravarthy" <vchakravarthy@verticalnet.com>
Cc: <mattias.waldau@abc.se>; "Arturo Borquez" <aborquez@altavista.com>;
<caml-list@inria.fr>
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)


> On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Vijay Chakravarthy wrote:
> > We are also trying to use Ocaml out here, mainly for prototyping
purposes
> > (at least thats the way I'll introduce it to the rest of the org.)
> > Once they find that rewriting the prototypes in java takes 10 times the
> > effort.....
>
> And runs at one tenth the speed :-). I laughed at this since one of my
> Caml-hating colleagues recently suggested to my manager (who reads
> this list :) that we rewrite some Java code in a low level language like C
> or OCaml (!) for speed.
>
> > The main difficulties we have faced have been --
> > a) Education - Out here even for people skilled in scheme and some other
> > functional languages, it is challenging to learn ocaml.
>
> What have the issues been? I hate to mention this again (and again, ...)
but
> I find that beginners and non-experts stumble over syntax a lot. Now, it
is
> clear that Daniel De Rauglaudre is too shy and modest to mention his
Revised
> syntax available with CamlP4. If your people have syntax problems (they do
> go away with familiarity IME) then check it out.
>
I personally dont have problems with the syntax, but I have found that
people take a little bit of time
getting used to the syntax. The simplest way to fix this is not CamlP4
(IMHO), but rather to provide a
lot of examples showing people how to do things they would commonly do. The
three liner Markus posted
in c.l.f for an echo server, for example, helps get buy-in when trying to
convince people this is a cool language,
and that happens primarily through the use of examples. I also understand
that there are a lot of examples
scattered around, but it would be nice to collect all of them in an easy to
look at manner. I believe that
Fredrick Lundh's python ematter book is a good role model in this area.


> > My team found it easier to learn erlang, for example. However, people
> > love the strong type checking, and the fact that if it compiles its
> > likely to run correctly... The english translation of the horse book
should
> > help.
>
> Yes, how is that coming? I hope that ugly horse can get replaced by a
> beautiful dromedary.
>
> > b) As I mentioned in a previous message, support for Windows is weak.
Many
>
> This might be the kind of thing that the Consortium can help with. If
> enough members want Windows they can kick in for an extensive thin binding
> to Windows services.
>
Its not that we need binding to Windows services. All that is required is
that the various packages
are as easy to make and use on windows (without installing cygwin). This is
mostly true, except for
some critical packages like findlib, dbm, etc. A dbm interface on windows to
Sleepycats berkeley db
would be great.


> > c) Package availability is fragmented. I have a good idea of various
> > packages etc, but to a newcomer, there is no single place to
> > track down code examples. Plus larger packages like Ensemble, Geneweb
etc
> > contain modules that would be useful in general, but
> > that is visible only when one peruses the source code of such packages.
>
> Two issues there. First is that some tool like findlib or the Python
distutils
> should be part of the toolset. Second is that a big library structure like
> the SML Basis library would be helpful.
>
> > On the other hand, the language and the libraries are excellent.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Plus functional programming languages are IDEAL for the type
> > of work we do, which is in the enterprise software space.
>
> I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?
>
> > BTW, I dont know if this is the right place for this, but are there any
> > people interested in ocaml programming out here in the
> > San Francisco area?
>
> Santa Clara (which hasn't had any blackouts!) area but there was an
> attempt at a NoCal OCaml users meeting. Maybe the participants can tell
> you how it went. It's great to hear that the number of industrial OCaml
> programmers is growing!
>
> -- Brian

Actually, we have two offices, one in SFO, the other in Palo Alto (right
next to Xerox Parc).

Vijay


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Dennis Gang Chen]

> I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?

I would like to hear more about using ocaml in VLSI design and
verification. For simulation and formal verification of chips, speed is crucial.

Cheers.

--
==================================================================
-- Dennis Gang Chen
-- Senior Software Engineer, CAD Tools
-- EDA Solutions and Products Strategic
-- Global Software Group (GSG)
--
-- email: Dennis.G.Chen@motorola.com
-- office: +61-8-8203 3560   fax: +61-8-8203 3501
-- addr: 2, Second Avenue, Mawson Lakes, Adelaide, 5095. Australia
==================================================================


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Dennis Gang Chen wrote:
> > I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> > hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?
> 
> I would like to hear more about using ocaml in VLSI design and
> verification. For simulation and formal verification of chips, speed is crucial.

Well, I work in the subfield called VLSI Physical Design, so simulation
here means SPICE, and the verification isn't formal. However, I do have 
a little bit of experience in the whole ASIC/RTL and behavioral modeling 
so I'll toss in my two cents. 

People write simulation models in all kinds of languages, including Perl
and Java, so speed is not always of the essence. For those cases where it
is, people often write in C (I worked at Denali for a while and I wrote
some of their models) since Verilog and VHDL simulators sometimes aren't 
quite good enough. Where would OCaml fit in there? Well, I've often
thought that the FFTW approach of just spitting out optimized C would be 
workable, and since most people acknowledge that MLs are really good for 
writing compilers, how about a Verilog (or VHDL if you're European :) RTL 
to C compiler? I had started on a Verilog front end for other reasons but
since migrating to physical design it's not as important. Incidentally, in 
the ASIC flows I've worked on a Verilog front end would have *lots* of
uses, flattening hierarchy, scan chain insertion, etc. Anyone interested
in working on such a tool? 

For formal verification I suspect you're asking about fast BDDs, a topic
that has come up a few times on this list. I suspect that for very
demanding problems you'll want the BDD library in C so as to minimize the 
overhead. I'd be delighted to find that a "pure OCaml" BDD library was
competitive to a well optimized C one, but I doubt that will be true. In
any case, you can just link with one of the available C libraries. I'm
surprised that no one has made a publically available binding to Cudd or 
some other C library. Maybe I'll do that one day if someone else doesn't
beat me to it. Once you have such a library available, I think that other 
tools (say a symbolic model checking tool) could be coded up far more
easily in OCaml than in many other languages, and the performance
bottleneck will have been addressed. 

>From the physical design standpoint, I just find it easier to express
complex algorithms in ML than other languages I've used, for all the 
old reasons. I suppose for things like linear programming OCaml isn't 
(yet :) ideal but the problems I work on are not huge, think leaf cell 
synthesis scale rather than whole chip (for now!). 

Anyways Dennis, if you're interested in pursuing any of those things I
mention, please contact me. One constraint is that I'd like to make source
available so that other EDA people get sucked into the OCaml vortex. There
are too many in-house point tools that die because they never get out. I've 
noticed quite a few postings from people in the industry (I post from my
ISP but I work at Artisan) so I know there are some more of us out there. 
Come on guys, do you want to hack on Perl for the rest of your careers? 
Let's make OCaml the EDA language of choice!

-- Brian


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[FabienFleutot]

> > My team found it easier to learn erlang, for example. However, people
> > love the strong type checking, and the fact that if it compiles its
> > likely to run correctly... The english translation of the horse book
should
> > help.
>
> Yes, how is that coming? I hope that ugly horse can get replaced by a
> beautiful dromedary.

Unfortunately it won't happen: Perl users have allready `copyrigthed' this
animal...
Anyway, I'd be pleased to know: Why a horse?
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Xavier Leroy]

> Unfortunately it won't happen: Perl users have allready
> `copyrigthed' this animal...
> Anyway, I'd be pleased to know: Why a horse?

The rumour I heard was that the O'Reilly graphic designer decided on a
horse "because it's the French camel".  Why not, indeed.

You'll notice that the animal on the book cover is not one of those
fancy racing horses, but rather the kind of workhorses ("percheron"?)
that was used in European farms for centuries.

Maybe we should change the name of the language to "Objective
Percheron" to match the book cover :-)

- Xavier Leroy

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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Daniel de Rauglaudre]

> Maybe we should change the name of the language to "Objective
> Percheron" to match the book cover :-)

I heard somebody telling that my software was written in OCalm
(sounds in French as "calm water"). Therefore I suggest: a whale.

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Xavier Urbain]

On Thursday March 29, 2001, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote: 
 > I heard somebody telling that my software was written in OCalm
 > (sounds in French as "calm water"). Therefore I suggest: a whale.


Too much of an endangered specie as far as I am concerned... Let's be
more confident! (even if scorpions or ants [that are to last] are not
likely a good advertisement).


-- 

Xavier Urbain		
---------------------------------------------------------------
L.R.I., Bât 490                    mailto: Xavier.Urbain@lri.fr
Université de Paris-Sud            phoneto:  (33) 1 69 15 42 32
F-91405 Orsay cedex                faxto:    (33) 1 69 15 65 86

     http://www.lri.fr/demons/urbain/introduction.fr.html
---------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Jean-Francois Monin]

> You'll notice that the animal on the book cover is not one of those
> fancy racing horses, but rather the kind of workhorses ("percheron"?)
> that was used in European farms for centuries.

Frankly, a racing horse would be more appropriate. Or a racing dog
(levrier, at least in french).

  JF
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, Jean-Francois Monin wrote:
> > You'll notice that the animal on the book cover is not one of those
> > fancy racing horses, but rather the kind of workhorses ("percheron"?)
> > that was used in European farms for centuries.
> 
> Frankly, a racing horse would be more appropriate. Or a racing dog
> (levrier, at least in french).

In the interests of backwards compatibility, and to prevent any confusion, 
I say stick with the camel. So what if Perl has "copyrighted" this? To
prevent confusion, and maybe to get more advertising by being
controversial, we could resurrect Joe Camel. I don't endorse tobacco, 
but I think that the Joe Camel ads were really cool. 

In the same way, I love the expression "ultra-puissant" used in the
O'Reilly book for describing Caml , even though as Joshua Guttman
correctly pointed out puissant looks and sounds a lot like "piss ant",
which means "insignificant" in that dialect of American English spoken by
those who reside south of the Mason-Dixon line. Well, I think that's what
it means, I'm a damned Yankee and proud of it :-).

-- Brian


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[John Max Skaller]

Brian Rogoff wrote:

> > The main difficulties we have faced have been --
> > a) Education - Out here even for people skilled in scheme and some other
> > functional languages, it is challenging to learn ocaml.
> 
> What have the issues been? I hate to mention this again (and again, ...) but
> I find that beginners and non-experts stumble over syntax a lot.

	The main problem is that the Tutorial and Reference are weak.
If the Ocaml Consortium gets off the ground, this ought to be one
of it's first tasks (i.e., hire a tech writer, not a programmer!)

	I am constantly stumbling over syntax: even when the underlying
principles are clear, it is hard to find the right syntax, and it
is even harder to comprehend which constructions are actually
supported by the compiler. My main source of information is postings
to this list.

> I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?

	No. It isn't so good for low level systems software, (use C or C++)
nor for integration tasks (use C). It should be much better than
Java for everything Java can do, if only library support were extended,
with some core support for security and internet.

-- 
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
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Brian Rogoff]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, John Max Skaller wrote:
> Brian Rogoff wrote:
> > > The main difficulties we have faced have been --
> > > a) Education - Out here even for people skilled in scheme and some other
> > > functional languages, it is challenging to learn ocaml.
> > 
> > What have the issues been? I hate to mention this again (and again, ...) but
> > I find that beginners and non-experts stumble over syntax a lot.
> 
> 	The main problem is that the Tutorial and Reference are weak.
> If the Ocaml Consortium gets off the ground, this ought to be one
> of it's first tasks (i.e., hire a tech writer, not a programmer!)

Can one of the translators comment on the status of the O'Reilly book 
translation? Once that's available people can modify it as the language
changes. 

> 	I am constantly stumbling over syntax: even when the underlying
> principles are clear, it is hard to find the right syntax, and it
> is even harder to comprehend which constructions are actually
> supported by the compiler. My main source of information is postings
> to this list.

The mailing list archive has been a great source of help to me too. 

> > I would have said that it's ideal for VLSI design software (any other EDA
> > hackers out there?) so maybe it's just ideal for everything?
> 
> 	No. It isn't so good for low level systems software, (use C or C++)

Sorry, I was trying to be funny. As usual, jokes are too much of a serious 
business to be attempted by amateurs. I'll postfix all of my lame attempts 
at humor with ":-)" in the future :-)

-- Brian


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Joshua D. Guttman]

Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com> writes:

>   > 
>   > 	The main problem is that the Tutorial and Reference are weak.
>   > If the Ocaml Consortium gets off the ground, this ought to be one
>   > of its first tasks (i.e., hire a tech writer, not a programmer!)
>   
>   Can one of the translators comment on the status of the O'Reilly book 
>   translation? Once that's available people can modify it as the language
>   changes. 
>   

Well, more than half of the chapters have been checked in in English.
All the remaining chapters have volunteers working on them.  

Of course, there will still be a lot of work to do to revise them and
edit them for consistency.  

It's a big job, translating a book.  And this book is over 700 pages.
But when it's done, it should make an important difference in making
OCaml easier to learn for English speakers.

        Joshua 

-- 
	Joshua D. Guttman		<guttman@mitre.org> 
	MITRE, Mail Stop S119 
	202 Burlington Rd.		Tel:	+1 781 271 2654
	Bedford, MA 01730-1420 USA	Fax:	+1 781 271 3816

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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[William Chesters]

John Max Skaller writes:
 > 	I am constantly stumbling over syntax: even when the underlying
 > principles are clear, it is hard to find the right syntax, and it
 > is even harder to comprehend which constructions are actually
 > supported by the compiler. My main source of information is postings
 > to this list.

Strange, I never had that problem.  Even coming back to ocaml
intermittently from C++ I don't have to worry too much about the
syntax of things ...
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Chris Hecker]

I just gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com) on "modern" language features, most of which are associated with functional programming (although the misnomer "modern" is a little odd, since they're almost all in Lisp, and ML's 20 years old :).  I don't have the feedback forms on the talk yet, so I don't know how useful people found it, but it filled up completely and they were turning people away, which for a 9am talk at a game conference strongly implies people are interested in alternative languages!

I'll put the slides up on my website soon, although I doubt anybody on this list will learn anything from them.  OCaml has all the features I talked about except 1) introspection/reflection and 2) template-style generics (as opposed to polymorphism-style generics).

>BTW, I dont know if this is the right place for this, but are there any
>people interested in ocaml programming out here in the
>San Francisco area? 

I'm still planning on organizing the Bay Area OCaml Users Group, or at least a big dinner for anyone who's interested.  I'll add your name to the list.  Anybody else in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA, who isn't on my list mail me privately.

Chris


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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[wester]

> 
> I just gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com) on "modern" language features, most of which are associated with functional programming (although the misnomer "modern" is a little odd, since they're almost all in Lisp, and ML's 20 ye
> ars old :).  I don't have the feedback forms on the talk yet, so I don't know how useful people found it, but it filled up completely and they were turning people away, which for a 9am talk at a game conference strongly implies people are interested in al
> ternative languages!
> 
> I'll put the slides up on my website soon, although I doubt anybody on this list will learn anything from them.  OCaml has all the features I talked about except 1) introspection/reflection and 2) template-style generics (as opposed to polymorphism-style 
> generics).
> 

Don't you hope that at least occasionally there will be an OCaml/funtional language 
beginner on this list, somebody like me? 

The original question was: 
                          
                            Why People Aren't Using OCaml?

I think one reason is that almost all programmers have to deal with C in one way
or the other. That means that C is one of the first languages everybody has to
learn. There has been a campain promoting object oriented programming over 
the last decade. The message was: If you want to write good, maintainable 
software use an object oriented language. The "natural" choice for C programmers
is then C++ and Java. I guess most programmers don't even have an idea 
what functional programming is. And for a programmer who has experience
with C++, Java and say Python there must be some really good reasons to
use any other language than these main stream languages (consider libraries, 
IDE's, colleagues etc.). 

What I missed when I started to look for alternatives to C++ 
(I still make silly mistakes that take a lot of time to eliminate),
Java (which I find cumbersome to use, all these cast's) and Python (to slow 
for some applications) was a sound comparison of languages that not only
claimed that one can implement programs 10 times faster when using for 
example OCaml (or Lisp or Haskell) compared to Java but that also gave 
simple examples which a C++, Java programmer is able to comprehend without
having the need to learn OCaml and become experienced in using it. 

One reason for me to learn Java and Python have been their huge libraries.
OCaml also has a good library (and a good documentation of it)  but there
are quite a lot of things missing compared to Java and Python (please 
don't understand this as critique).   

Onother problem that I as a OCaml beginner had (and still have) is where
to use ";" and where not and some other problems with the syntax 
(why not "if then else endif" instead of having to use "begin end"?). I think
that the hints in the OCaml documentation concerning this problems 
could be more extensive to help beginners.

I just began to use OCaml for some small programs. I especially like the
toplevel which together with Emacs and Tuareg makes rapid prototyping
quite easy. But probably I still didn't grasp what the real advantages of 
OCaml compared to C++, Java etc. are. So give me and other OCaml 
beginners some more help to better understand what makes OCaml
superior compared to these main stream languages.

Rolf 

 
 

-------------------------------------
Rolf Wester
wester@ilt.fhg.de
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[John Max Skaller]

wester@ilt.fhg.de wrote:

>But probably I still didn't grasp what the real advantages of
> OCaml compared to C++, Java etc. are. So give me and other OCaml
> beginners some more help to better understand what makes OCaml
> superior compared to these main stream languages.

	Ocaml offers (at least :-) two advantages for elementary
use. The first is a proper concept of union. Here is an Ocaml union
and a use of it:

	type node = 
		| Const of int 
		| Unary of char * node
		| Binary of char * node * node

	(* print expression tree in reverse polish *)
	let rp nd = match nd with
		| Const i -> print_int i
		| Unary (op , arg) -> 
			rp arg  ^ " " print_char op
		| Binary (op, arg1, arg2) ->
			rp arg1 ^ " " ^ rp arg2 ^ " " ^ print_char op

How would you do this in C/C++?

	In C, you _ought_ to use:

	struct node {
		enum { Const_tag, Unary_tag, Binary_tag } tag;
		union {
			int Const;
			struct { char op; node *arg; } Unary;
			struct { char op; node *arg1; node *arg2; } Binary;
		}
	};

To use it, you need to write:

	void rp(node *nd) {
		switch (u.tag) {
		case Const_tag: printf("%d",u.Const); break;
		case Unary_tag: 
			rp(u.Unary.arg); printch(' '); printch(U.Unary.op);
			break;
		case Binary_tag: 
			rp(u.Binary.arg1); printch(' ');
			rp(u.Binary.arg2); printch(' '); printch(U.Binary.op);
			break;
	}

You might leave out the break, and you might accidentally refer to the
wrong component: you can't make either of these mistakes in Ocaml.
Although not shown, you'd have problems destroying the structure
if you forgot a 'free': Ocaml collects garbage automatically.

The above is the 'correctest' solution in C. It won't work in C++,
however, because unions of constructible types are not allowed.
So you're forced to use inheritance and a dynamic cast, which is
very confusing because there is NO abstraction here, and NO
polymorphism.

The second advantage for elementary programming is that functions
are first class values. What this means is that you can define
a function in a scope, and pass the function to some other function,
and when you invoke it the scope is remembered. The thing you are
passing is sometimes called a function _closure_. Here is a simple
example:

	let printit printer = printer () in
	let f x = 
		let a = 1 in
		let p () = print_int a in
		printit p

Here, the printit function just invokes the printing routine 'printer',
which is 'p' in the function 'f'. In passing 'p', the value 'a' is not
forgotten. You can do the equivalent in C++ with functiods: but it 
is VERY messy (and very hard to get the memory management right).
Closures are very powerful. 

You do the 'moral equivalent' of the above in C++ using 
classes .. using about 10 times the number of lines of code, 
and probably destroying locality. Here is an example:

	let p lst = 
		let a = 1 in 
		List.iter (fun x -> print_int (x+a)) lst

In C++:

	struct printer {
		int a;
		printer(int aa) : a(aa) {}
		void operator()(int x); { cout << x + a; }
	}
	void p (list<int> l) {
		int a = 1;
		for_each(lst.begin(), lst,end(), printer(a));
	}

but you have to define the 'struct printer' outside
the 'p' routine, destroying locality. Just try
replacing a triply indexed loop with three invocations
of 'for_each' to see what I mean: STL is a great library,
which is basically useless because functions aren't first
class citizens.

[This particular example has significance to me: I gave up
writing a book on generic programming in C++ when I saw
just how long winded it was to code a triply nested loop
using 'for_each']

-- 
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
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Re: [Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Joseph R. Kiniry]

I attended the GDC as well this past week.  I saw your talk on the schedule 
Chris but I'm afraid that I was unable to attend.  I sent someone from my 
company though and they had good things to say about topic, attendence, and 
your rants. :)

Additionally, over the next two days, I ran into a number of folks that 
asked me about the use of OCaml/ML in game development.  The reason that 
this came up is because my company in this space did an "objective" 
language evaluation when it came to doing prototype development.  This 
process really sparked a lot of interest and, of course, my pushing for 
OCaml came up.

We ended up building the prototype in Eiffel, CLOS, Objective-C, C++, Java, 
and iTcl and we chose Java in the end.  I've been happy with that choice, 
but I was unhappy (at the time and today) that I couldn't convince the 
other founders to give OCaml a try.  Perhaps I'll have more luck with these 
new ICFP results that Chris railed on about.  Additionally, I'll just have 
to secretly implement out prototype in OCaml as well to do a one year 
post-mortum on language choice.

In any case, the point is that some forward-thinking communities that are 
willing to try crazy things now and then for selective reasons (e.g. 
performance), like the gaming development community, are buzzing a bit 
about OCaml.

Of course, now the big (no, make that enormous) problem is one of platform. 
99% of game development is performed in C++/C because those are the only 
language supported on the top platforms (Windows, Playstation, Nintendo, 
Sega, and Xbox).  Who's interested in an OCaml port to the Playstation 2? :)

Best,
Joe Kiniry
--
Joseph R. Kiniry                    http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/
California Institute of Technology        ID 78860581      ICQ 4344804
Chief Scientist             DALi, Inc.         http://www.dalilab.com/


--On Monday, March 26, 2001 07:43:48 PM -0800 Chris Hecker <checker@d6.com> 
wrote:

>
> I just gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com) on
> "modern" language features, most of which are associated with functional
> programming (although the misnomer "modern" is a little odd, since
> they're almost all in Lisp, and ML's 20 years old :).  I don't have the
> feedback forms on the talk yet, so I don't know how useful people found
> it, but it filled up completely and they were turning people away, which
> for a 9am talk at a game conference strongly implies people are
> interested in alternative languages!
>
> I'll put the slides up on my website soon, although I doubt anybody on
> this list will learn anything from them.  OCaml has all the features I
> talked about except 1) introspection/reflection and 2) template-style
> generics (as opposed to polymorphism-style generics).
>
>> BTW, I dont know if this is the right place for this, but are there any
>> people interested in ocaml programming out here in the
>> San Francisco area?
>
> I'm still planning on organizing the Bay Area OCaml Users Group, or at
> least a big dinner for anyone who's interested.  I'll add your name to
> the list.  Anybody else in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA, who isn't on
> my list mail me privately.
>
> Chris
>
>
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Re: [Caml-list] recursive modules redux, & interface files

[Brian Rogoff]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> On 22-Mar-2001, Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com> wrote:
> > I haven't found in
> > my own programming a compelling case where module spanning mutually
> > recursive function definitions were an issue. Is it possible to produce a 
> > reasonably sized example, Hendrik (or Chris)?
> 
> In the Mercury compiler, we have made significant use of module spanning
> mutually recursive procedures.  For example, the code generator
> is split among several modules, roughly for each language construct
> (e.g. ite_gen handles code generation for if-then-elses,
> switch_gen handles code generation for switches, etc.),
> and since if-then-elses can contain switches (and vice versa),
> the procedures in these modules are mutually recursive.

Interesting. A similar example occurred in a discussion in comp.lang.ml 
between Matthias Blume and Greg Morrissett (concerning datatypes not
functions) where MB argued as an SML/NJ maintainer that such recurrences
were best placed in the same module and GM thought it best that they be
split even though recursive. Clearly I lean towards MB's view on this 
though I take it that there are other schools of thought. 

What is your criteria for splitting the functions into different modules?

-- Brian


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[Caml-list] Why People Aren't Using OCAML? (was Haskell)

[Mattias Waldau]

Something we should think about also for Ocaml

http://www.jelovic.com/articles/why_people_arent_using_haskell.htm

"What can be done about this? First and foremost the Haskell community must
make a standard distribution of Haskell that contains enough libraries to be
useful. That should include a regular expression library, an Internet
protocol library, a library for dealing with standard internet data and
encoding, a crypto library, a multimedia library and a GUI library.

Next, the Haskell community must step out of its research circles and start
publicizing Haskell to the practicing programmers. Write articles in DDJ and
similar publications. Publish real-world programs written in Haskell."

Most of this is also relevant for Ocaml, for example there are
crypto libraries and XML-support (for example PXP, which require wlex, which
is a hazzle).

I stumbled over Ocaml, thanks to Mercury and ICFP-contest.

/mattias

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