Re: [Caml-list] partial eval question

[Walid Taha <taha@cs.rice.edu>]

Sorry for picking up this thread after such a long time, but I only now 
got a chance to see this email.

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, William Chesters wrote:

| > By adding the multi-stage evaluation into a programming language,
| > we obtain one general, transparent and simple tool.
|
|It's not simple or transparent, and for many tasks it isn't necessary.
|Perhaps it's a good general tool for the generation of code for
|numerics etc.---it may help specialist library writers.

I'm note sure why you think MSP is "neither simple nor transparent".  What 
can be simpler than having just three new constructs to do both generate 
and execute all programs, to be guaranteed statically that (many) 
generated programs will be well-typed even before you generate them, and 
to know that the three new constructs satisfy simple equational reasoning 
principles?

"For many tasks, it isn't necessary" is an argument that can also be made 
against module systems, objects, functions, and pretty much anything that 
can be viewed as a language feature.

The primary audience is indeed "specialist writers", who are interested in 
building program generators, and who build enough program generators to 
know what kind of support would actually help them in doing that.  Note 
that it is NOT for *users* of program generators:  it's for the 
people who *build* them.

Peace.

Walid.

-------------------
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