RE: [Caml-list] OCaml growing pains

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@indiegamedesign.com>]

Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>
> You are possibly the worst evangelist I have ever seen.  The good
> evangelists actually know quite a lot about the stuff they pontificate
> about.

Living a stone's throw from Microsoft as I do, and often wishing for a
stone, I am ROTFLMAO at what you say.  The book of Microsoft states that
knowing everything about a technology is clearly not necessary to market
it.  When OCaml has the popularity of C# or Windows, we'll talk about
what evangelist qualities led to that.  Meanwhile, you should realize
that the people who are best at excruciating technical detail are the
worst evangelists, because they aren't interested in being accessible to
anyone who doesn't meet their high standards of technical content.

Thus it is necessary to have more than 1 type of person to promote a
language, and more than 1 culture.    (The Python Software Foundation
still doesn't understand this, unfortunately).  I'm doing just fine
promoting OCaml to game developers right now, no matter how much Xavier
might shake his head.  That's because I understand game industry culture
far better than he does.  I know what their issues are and what I have
to say to address them.  I answer honestly about where OCaml is really
at, as best I can.  Even if someone thinks I answer incorrectly, the
more important truth is game developers go through the exact same futz /
misconception learning curve that I do.

Some things are not misconceptions.  OCaml does have baroque syntax, a
long learning curve for imperative programmers, technical flaws, a
relative but not absolute lack of libraries, a futzy toolchain on
Windows, only fledgling community organization, and no marketing
materials that would convince a suit to give it a whirl.

> Your posts about user groups would be tolerable if they were limited
> to one every few weeks, and not also followed up with reams of
> whines and moans about Bayesian filters conspiring against you.

Which is what actually happens.  You aren't getting ML S*attle announces
*and* whining, there'd be no reason for it if the announces actually
went through.  I tried again last night and still haven't managed it.
Maybe a very large code snippet would do the trick.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brand*n Van Every               S*attle, WA

Praise Be to the caml-list Bayesian filter! It blesseth
my postings, it is evil crap!  evil crap!  Bigarray!
Unboxed overhead group!  Wondering!  chant chant chant...

// return an array of 100 packed tuples
temps
  int $[tvar0][2*100]; // what the c function needs
  value $[tvar1]; // one int
  value $[tvar2]; // one tuple
  int $[tvar3] // loop control var
oncePre
eachPre
  $[cvar0]=&($[tvar0][0]);
eachPost
  $[lvar0] = alloc(2*100, 0 /*NB: zero-tagged block*/ );
  for(int $[tvar3]=0;$[tvar3]<100;$[tvar3]++) {
    $[tvar2] = alloc_tuple(2);
    $[tvar1] = Val_int($[cvar0][0+2*$[tvar3]]);
    Store_field($[tvar2],0,$[tvar1]);
    $[tvar1] = Val_int($[cvar0][1]);
    Store_field($[tvar2],1,$[tvar1+2*$[tvar3]]);
    Array_store($[lvar0],$[tvar3],$[tvar0]);
  }
oncePost

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