OCaml Summer Project deadline approaching (was Re: [Caml-list] Interactive technical computing)

* OCaml Summer Project deadline approaching (was Re: [Caml-list] Interactive technical computing)
@ 2007-03-08  2:11 Yaron Minsky
  2007-03-08  2:22 ` Jim Miller
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: Yaron Minsky @ 2007-03-08  2:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jim Miller; +Cc: Jon Harrop, caml-list

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I definitely agree that this kind of interactive visualization is a big hole
in the OCaml ecosystem.  If I might make a small plug, doing the initial
work on a good interactive visualization system for OCaml would make a great
project for the OCaml Summer Project (http://osp2007.janestcapital.com).

This seems like a good time to remind people that the deadline for
submissions is approaching fast.  All submissions must be in by March 15th,
and decisions will be rendered by March 30th.  We already have a number of
solid proposals, and would love to have more.  We hope to help bring some
great OCaml software into existence this summer.

y

On 3/7/07, Jim Miller <gordon.j.miller@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think that this would be a potentially fantastic application!  As a
> physicist I am frequently faced with the option of using an interactive tool
> that supports graphics (PV-WAVE, IDL, R, and Matlab/Octave are very popular)
> but is VERY slow or doing things in a fast but tedious language (C/C++ are
> currently the rage with a few individuals that still do Fortran 9X).
>
> Having an OCaml based language that combines a top level command line loop
> that allows me to interactive explore data and develop scripts but that
> allows me to compile those into something fast could be a very, very useful
> tool.  My particular domains are atmospheric photochemistry as well as
> satellite mission planning and imagery exploitation.  We tend to do a LOT
> less with 3D visualizations and much more with traditional line, contour,
> and scatter plots.  We also do a lot of false color imagery.
>
> The closest that I have come to this is a quick module that allows me to
> spawn a gnuplot program and pass command strings, via a pipe.  A few
> functions to ensure that data is formatted properly and I have something
> that's manageable.
>
> I'd be interested in conspiring/planning on something in this space.  It
> would also be useful to see if there's a useful way to bridge this with R,
> which is my current favorite language for doing statistical data analysis
> and plot generation but it still suffers from the problems of speed.
>
> On 3/7/07, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Being a user of both OCaml and Mathematica, playing with the new F#
> > language
> > from Microsoft and watching tutorial videos about VPython:
> >
> >    http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=pythonThompsonVPythonSeries
> >
> > has given me a lot of inspiration about interactive technical computing
> > environments. This class of applications is hugely useful for working
> > scientists and engineers because it lets you slice and dice your data in
> > interesting ways whilst also giving you visual throwback and even
> > letting you
> > do some fancy visualisations.
> >
> > For example, I'm in the process of updating my ray tracer language
> > comparison:
> >
> >   http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/index.html
> >
> > and I'm using a mix of OCaml (to fire off compilation and execution
> > commands)
> > and Mathematica (to dissect the results, compute verbosity using regexps
> > and
> > plot graphs):
> >
> >   http://www.ffconsultancy.com/tmp/mathematica.png
> >
> > Mathematica's equivalent of the OCaml top-level is called a notebook. It
> > provides expression input and result output, just like OCaml, but
> > integrates
> > graphics, adds typesetting and lots of mathematical functions. However,
> > it is
> > widely used for more general purpose programming despite being very
> > slow.
> >
> > Using F# from Visual Studio 2005 provides some of this functionality.
> > The
> > following screenshots illustrate 2D and 3D graphics spawned from an F#
> > interactive session using a little of my own code and
> > DirectX/ComponentsXtra:
> >
> >   http://www.ffconsultancy.com/tmp/fs_xygraph.png
> >    http://www.ffconsultancy.com/tmp/fs_3dplot.png
> >
> > For all non-trivials examples in F# it is necessary to spawn a separate
> > thread
> > to handle the GUI of the visualization, or the GUI will hang when the
> > top-level is doing an intensive computation.
> >
> > I think F# has a great future because of its ability to spawn
> > visualizations
> > from a running interactive session. Expensive commercial offerings like
> > Matlab and Mathematica are ok when you're doing something they have
> > built-in
> > (e.g. a Fourier transform) but when you're problem is not trivially
> > decomposed into their built-in operators (e.g. a wavelet transform), F#
> > and
> > OCaml are typically 2-5x faster, and when you must resort to more
> > general
> > purpose programming F# and OCaml are often 100x faster.
> >
> > However, there is a lot of work to be done in getting competitive
> > charting and
> > visualization tools into F# and I'm thinking that OCaml could benefit
> > from a
> > joint venture here. Low-level routines would target DirectX in F# and
> > OpenGL
> > in OCaml but high-level routines could be language and platform
> > agnostic,
> > handling a scene graph that is essentially a typed version of
> > Mathematica's
> > to provide much faster graphics and even interactive visualisation
> > (Mathematica is software rendered and not interactive!).
> >
> > This raises several questions:
> >
> > . What OCaml programs currently allow OpenGL-based visualizations to be
> > spawned from the top-level?
> >
> > . Has anyone tried to write an IDE that mixes OCaml code with graphics?
> >
> > . Would anyone here be interested in a low-cost cross-platform technical
> > computing environment based upon the OCaml and F# languages?
> >
> > Obviously I'm interested in this from a commercial perspective. That
> > looks
> > easy for F# but not so easy for OCaml. Compiled OCaml+OpenGL code is not
> > as
> > portable (between machines) as F#+DirectX. Also, I can sell F# DLLs and
> > even
> > make the library available to other .NET languages (albeit with a
> > significantly less productive API).
> >
> > Finally, I'd like to note that operator overloading is probably the
> > single
> > biggest difference between my F# and OCaml code. The ability to apply +
> > and -
> > to many types, particularly vectors and matrices, makes this kind of
> > work so
> > much easier. Even if you have to add the odd type annotation. So I'd
> > love to
> > see a compatible implementation of overloading introduced into OCaml.
> >
> > I'd like to hear everyone's opinions on this as, it seems to me, we're
> > sitting
> > on the foundations of a great technical computing system.
> >
> > --
> > Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
> > OCaml for Scientists
> > http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists
> >
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