It's funny, because I'm studying why language succeed or not, for my M1
dissertation (M1 Management), and it's one of the big factor, among others,
of sucess.
Ocaml is highly expressive, so you could turn around, but it's a big
problem.

I think it would be important and interesting to create a little
organization which discuss bout a standard lib and would begin making a
synthesis of all these "standard" library.

It would be very interesting too, to  a lot of company which could take
advantage of the "0 debug" advantages of caml : This fact imply a lot of cut
in software building costs which would be a great advantage for company who
would offer service based on OCaml.

OCaml is now mature, it could be considered out of the laboratory, it thus
become able to cross the chasm :
http://robrozicki.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/crossing_the_chasm1.png

But making a good compiler with a minimal API isn't sufficient.

So, in summary :
- OCaml is ready to cross the chasm, it was too early 10 years ago
- Ocaml need a huge __standard__ API. And there a lot of work to unify about
this
- Ocaml need a standard lib package management, and some good ones exist for
Ocaml



2011/3/31 Christophe Papazian <christophe.papazian@gmail.com>

> Selling cars without tires !
>
> This is a huge problem of the ocaml community. Who wants a minimal library
> ?
> What makes other languages popular ? There are huge API.
> For Ocaml, the main web site is just for the compiler, the ocaml hump is
> refreshed
> each month with few new things. So I need to use as well godi (another web
> site),
> batteries (still in progress, another web site), janestreet (another
> solution, another
> web site). Everybody is making is own api, which is not very interesting
> for the end user.
>
> When I use python or latex, eveything is centralized, I pick the packages I
> need, and all is done.
> Ocaml situation would be understandable if this was something new, but
> after 15 years, it's just
> the french way : "We have good ideas, but we don't care how to sell them".
> And this must be a reason why ocaml community is still small.
>
>        Christophe
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 30 mars 11 à 14:57, Dawid Toton a écrit :
>
>
>
>>  It would be so good if some missing operations on numbers could be
>>> added to the standard set : (...)
>>> The lack of those functions gives a feeling of immaturity of the
>>> language.
>>> Is it possible in some near futur release to add them ?
>>>
>> This is a matter of libraries, not the language. The standard library
>> coming with raw ocaml distribution is intended to be lightweight and
>> minimal. It is a library like core[1] or batteries[2] that should
>> provide the "standard set" of operations. You can consider filling a
>> feature request ticket.
>>
>> Dawid
>>
>> [1] http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/13
>> [2] http://batteries.forge.ocamlcore.org/
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
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>
>


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