Re: [Caml-list] OCaml turns 25

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

Long live OCaml!

Thanks Xavier, and to all the brilliant minds that contributed to the evolution
and adoption of this beautiful language, and system, in this past quarter of a century.

If I may add a personal note, one truly remarkable fact is that some rather
complex code written in 1998 using OCaml 1.07 [1] could be compiled and run last
year using OCaml 4.x *without modifications*: the only visible changes were the
new warnings spotting potential issues in the code, thanks to the many
improvements to the compiler over time.

For the curious, all the details are here: https://www.dicosmo.org/Articles/2020-ReScienceC.pdf

Cheers

--
Roberto

[1] that was the first version including support for marshalling closures,
added in a fantastic one week-spring in Pisa exactly for this code :-)

On Sun, May 09, 2021 at 09:33:35AM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
>    Dear OCaml enthusiasts,
>    25 years ago, on May 9th 1996, release 1.00 of the Objective Caml
>    language and system was announced:
>    [1]https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/1996-05/msg00003.html
>    It was already the consolidation of many years of work, integrating
>    Jérôme Vouillon and Didier Rémy's work on objects and classes within
>    Caml Special Light, itself a combination of my work on modules and
>    native-code compilation with earlier code taken from Caml Light,
>    especially Damien Doligez's GC.
>    Little did I know that O(bjective) Caml would still be there 25 years
>    later!
>    A lot happened during this time, including several major evolutions of
>    the language, and, much more importantly, the emergence of a community
>    of users and an ecosystem of tools and libraries.  But maybe this was
>    just the beginning for something even bigger?  We'll see...
>    Happy birthday, OCaml!
>    - Xavier Leroy
> 
> References
> 
>    1. https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/1996-05/msg00003.html

-- 
Roberto Di Cosmo
 
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