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 AAA22303; Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:20:18 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA22299 for ; Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:20:17 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from smtp1.cswv.com (smtp1.cswv.com [4.17.129.17]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f6BMKGX26117 for ; Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:20:16 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from smtp1.cswv.com ([4.17.129.17]) by smtp1.cswv.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.197.19); Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:20:32 -0400 Received: FROM exchange1.cswv.com BY smtp1.cswv.com ; Wed Jul 11 18:20:31 2001 -0400 Received: by exchange1.cswv.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id ; Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:23:08 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Krishnaswami, Neel" To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] A G'Caml question" + additional info Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 18:23:04 -0400 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 Markus Mottl [mailto:markus@mail4.ai.univie.ac.at] writes: > On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Bruce Hoult wrote: > > But the language itself seems to be starting to rival C++ for sheer > > complexity. When you want to do something you seem to have a choice > > of using this feature, or *this* one, or *this* newly developed one. > > Having choices is not necessarily bad, being forced to using many > alternatives is. I think that OCaml has succeeded quite well so far in > keeping different features apart as one can see in the standard library, > which can be used with the core language + modules alone. I hope this > will stay so! Permit me to disagree. I find nearly all of OCaml's features highly useful and orthogonal, and I am only working on medium size projects. For instance, I recently wrote yet another set implementation, because the functorial interface to the Set module in the standard library wouldn't let me use it in a fully polymorphic fashion. If the Set library had been written using OCaml's object system, then I would not have had to redo my own. From this experience I conclude that the right thing is to use the features that offer the nicest degree of modularity and reusability. I can offer a demonstration if you are interested, but to illustrate I'd need to show both approaches in about 75 lines of code, which may be too much for a public email. -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswcasa.com ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr