Re: [Caml-list] Re: Haskell vs OCaml

[Yaron Minsky <yminsky@janestreet.com>]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
>
> FWIW, I'd say that the differences between OCaml and Haskell are of academic
> interest (first-class modules vs type classes). The important thing is the
> shortcomings that both OCaml and Haskell share (high barrier to entry, poor
> interop, performance limitations, limited libraries, commerce unfriendly,
> ageing foundations).

While I agree that first-class modules vs type-classes is not the most
burning issue, I broadly disagree with your dismal estimate of the
state of the language.

I don't think OCaml is unfriendly to commercial users.  Certainly Jane
Street has had a great relationship with the OCaml maintainers and the
larger community.  And while there are performance limitations,
OCaml's overall performance is quite good and quite predictable.  That
performance is also rapidly improving as more and more people start
working on improving the foundations.

It's true that the selection of libraries is limited (less true for
Haskell, FWIW).  But with the recent arrival of OPAM, the ease of
using OCaml has gone way up, and we're already seeing improvements to
the set of available libraries.  The rest of the toolchain, from
performance monitoring tools to document generation to support for
IDE-like features, are all actively being worked on.

All told, between the work being done at INRIA, OCamlPro, OCaml Labs,
and the broader community there's an amazing amount of energy being
poured into the language.

And one shouldn't lose sight of the most important facts about the
language: OCaml is highly productive, and it greatly simplifies the
task of building efficient, reliable and above all correct code.

y

> Cheers,
> Jon.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: caml-list-request@inria.fr [mailto:caml-list-request@inria.fr] On
> Behalf Of Chet Murthy
> Sent: 18 March 2013 18:05
> To: caml-list@inria.fr
> Subject: [Caml-list] Re: Haskell vs OCaml
>
>
> Geez, I don't want to fan the flames of any sort of war, but .... as long as
> this subject came up, I'd really like to find out if anybody has done
> decent-sized-system comparisons of ocaml and haskell for performance and
> footprint.
>
> I'm a long-time Caml (and before that SML) hacker, and (hopefully) fully
> appreciate the FP Nature, so it's not like I'm looking for an argument about
> which language is better, etc, etc.
>
> And I'm not looking for microbenchmarks, either.  I'm looking for
> -significant- systems that have been implemented in both, and information
> about footprint and performance of those systems.
>
> Why am I looking?  Because if you're a bigot about your favorite language,
> and -never- look for countervailing facts about the competition, you might
> miss out.
>
> Heck, that's how I became an Ocaml bigot lo' these many years.
>
> So .... anybody got anything?
> --chet--
>
>
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