Re: [Caml-list] 20th anniversary

[Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto@dicosmo.org>]

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And a *huge* thanks for bringing us all this fantastic language, Xavier!

I keep as one of my most fond memories the fantastic teamwork at Formel,
then Cristal, then Gallium, that brought together under your direction some
of the brightest minds on the many challenges in language design, and that
led to what OCaml is today, one of the most beautiful languages I know.

Let me offer the best whishes for the future of OCaml: I'm looking forward
to see the sound, principled, elegant approach that lies at the heart of
OCaml expand to all its ecosystem.

Long live OCaml!

--
Roberto



2015-09-12 10:04 GMT+02:00 Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>:

> Twenty years ago to this day, on Sept 12th 1995, the mail below announced
> the availability of Caml Special Light 1.06.  This was the first public
> release of the programming language and system that was to become Objective
> Caml, then OCaml.
>
> All the Caml Special Light language design is still there today in OCaml;
> likewise, parts of the implementation are clearly recognizable in the
> latest
> OCaml sources.  However, in 20 years, the language picked up many language
> features that were open research problems in 1995, such as objects and
> classes with type inference, polymorphic variants, first-class
> polymorphism,
> and first-class modules.  Likewise, the implementation, initially targeted
> to Unix workstations, is now running on an amazing variety of platforms,
> from $35 Raspberry Pi to mainframes with 1 TB of RAM to cloud distributed
> systems.
>
> The most spectacular evolution of those 20 years is certainly the growth of
> the user's community and programming ecosystem.  Many application areas of
> OCaml were not expected, such as financial applications and systems
> programming; others, such as Web programming and bioinformatics, did not
> even exist in 1995.  Likewise, the amount of freely available libraries,
> programming tools, programming environments, teaching material, and
> infrastructure (OPAM & the Platform) is well beyond my wildest dreams of
> the
> time.  A big "thank you" to the great many people who contributed to this
> success!
>
> Far from slowing down, OCaml's development has been picking up momentum
> recently.  The next 20 years of OCaml will be exciting indeed!
>
> - Xavier Leroy, on behalf of the core Caml development team
>
>
> From: Xavier Leroy <xleroy@pauillac.inria.fr>
> Message-Id: <199509120927.LAA00417@pauillac.inria.fr>
> Subject: Release 1.06 of Caml Special Light
> To: caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 11:27:13 +0200 (MET DST)
>
> Announcing Caml Special Light 1.06, the first public release of the
> Caml Special Light system.
>
> Caml Special Light is a complete reimplementation of Caml Light that
> adds a powerful module system in the style of Standard ML. The module
> system is based on the notion of manifest types / translucent sums; it
> supports Modula-style separate compilation, and fully transparent
> higher-order functors (see the papers in the POPL 94 and 95
> proceedings).
>
> Caml Special Light comprises two compilers: a bytecode compiler in the
> style of Caml Light (but up to twice as fast), and a high-performance
> native code compiler for the following platforms:
>
>         Alpha processors: DecStation 3000 under OSF1
>         Sparc processors: Sun Sparcstation under SunOS 4.1 or Solaris 2
>         Intel 386 / 486 / Pentium processors: PCs under Linux
>         Mips processors: DecStation 3100 and 5000 under Ultrix 4
>
> The native-code compiler delivers excellent performance (better than
> Standard ML of New Jersey 1.08 on our tests), while retaining the
> moderate memory requirements of the bytecode compiler.
>
> Caml Special Light is still in the experimental state: the base
> language has changed and will change again in significant ways,
> source-level compatibility is not ensured, the implementation is
> alpha-release quality, and many Caml Light tools and libraries have
> not yet been ported to Caml Special Light. The present release is
> targeted towards testers, adventurous souls, and users with strong
> interest in modules and high-performance compilation; other users are
> encouraged to stay with Caml Light 0.7 for a while.
>
> The source distribution (for Unix machines only) is available by
> anonymous FTP on ftp.inria.fr, directory lang/caml-light.
>
> More information on Caml Special Light is available on the World Wide
> Web, at http://pauillac.inria.fr/csl/.
>
> Bug reports and technical questions should be directed to
> caml-light@pauillac.inria.fr. For general questions and comments,
> use the Caml mailing list caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr (to subscribe:
> caml-list-request@pauillac.inria.fr).
>
> - Xavier Leroy
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
> % Caml Special Light                  "Taste Caml in a whole new Light" %
> % caml-light@pauillac.inria.fr                                          %
> % Projet Cristal, INRIA, B.P.105, 78153 Le Chesnay, France.             %
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>



-- 
Roberto Di Cosmo

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