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 DAA31683; Wed, 4 Feb 2004 03:22:58 +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 DAA31624 for ; Wed, 4 Feb 2004 03:22:54 +0100 (MET) Received: from cs.rice.edu (cs.rice.edu [128.42.1.30]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id i142Mrv18678 for ; Wed, 4 Feb 2004 03:22:53 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cs.rice.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DE924AA86; Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:22:52 -0600 (CST) Received: from cs.rice.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (cs.rice.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 04466-01-10; Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:22:51 -0600 (CST) Received: from boromir.cs.rice.edu (boromir.cs.rice.edu [128.42.129.71]) (using TLSv1 with cipher EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA (168/168 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by cs.rice.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 208374A9A3; Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:22:51 -0600 (CST) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 20:22:50 -0600 (CST) From: Walid Taha To: William Chesters Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] partial eval question In-Reply-To: <16286.18688.149948.39036@beertje.william.bogus> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Virus-Scanned: by amavis-20030616-p5 at rice.edu X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 chesters:01 multi-stage:01 statically:01 well-typed:01 equational:01 simpler:01 constructs:02 constructs:02 reasoning:02 walid:02 walid:02 objects:02 thread:02 module:03 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk 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