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 AAA02132; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 00:25:25 +0100 (MET) 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 AAA02606 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 00:25:23 +0100 (MET) Received: from epexch01.qlogic.org ([63.170.40.3]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2CNPMX10610 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 00:25:23 +0100 (MET) Received: from epmailtmp.qlogic.org ([10.20.33.254]) by epexch01.qlogic.org with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5329); Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:26:51 -0600 Received: from [10.20.33.146] ([10.20.33.146]) by epmailtmp.qlogic.org with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.4905); Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:26:51 -0600 Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:35:52 -0600 (CST) From: Brian Hurt X-X-Sender: Reply-To: Brian Hurt To: Michael Schuerig cc: Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity In-Reply-To: <200303122334.34982.schuerig@acm.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-OriginalArrivalTime: 12 Mar 2003 23:26:51.0358 (UTC) FILETIME=[DC2CCFE0:01C2E8EE] X-Spam: no; 0.00; qlogic:01 caml-list:01 alwyn:01 goodloe:01 prover:01 gui:01 screens:99 comming:01 vapor:99 doable:01 cobol:01 considers:01 she:98 ocaml:01 raises:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Michael Schuerig wrote: > On Wednesday 12 March 2003 19:08, Alwyn Goodloe wrote: > > I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do > > in industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't > > care about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they > > can't draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases. > > Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages > and database access? Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is > mostly yes. Comming from the industry- mostly, yes. Completely, no. > That being as it is, would things in industry be that much > better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise > applications? Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement > over, say, Java and J2EE? Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where > the advantages OCaml provides are far more important? > I could easily see an Ocaml J2EE. If you read the vapor in the right way, .NET could be considered a language-agnostic J2EE (that already has it's own Ocaml-variant in F#). Having had some experience with Microsoft, Microsoft's products, and Microsoft's history of product announcements, I'd recommend a wait and see approach. However, the concept is doable in theory. It's hard to estimate how ignorant the "bottom of the barrel" programmers are. My father was teaching a class recently, attempting to teach OO programming to a bunch of Cobol programmers in Visual Basic (that last wasn't mentioned until after he had signed on). He was a more than a little surprised when programmers with decades of 'experience' didn't know what a for loop was. Twenty years in the industry, and they'd never had to use one. Of course, this also raises the question of what a programmer is. I have a friend who considers herself a technical writer/buisness analyst. For one reason or another, she does an awful lot of Visual Basic scripting. She doesn't use for loops either- on the other hand, she also doesn't consider herself a programmer, let alone an experienced senior software engineer. Brian ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners