Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Oliver Bandel]

Hello,


the program Scilab, a Matlab-clone,
written by INRIA, is written in C,
and since version 5.0 is using Java-Stuff for Plotting,
and this stuff is used in a way that it does not really
support Linux...


...why is that program not written with INRIA's
Ocaml?


Maybe rewriting it would make sense,
because Scilab seems not to be very stable.

...and from INRIA's view I would think: they have developed
OCaml, but do not use it for their own developments....
... strange, isn't it?

Ciao,
    Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Stéphane Lescuyer]

> ...and from INRIA's view I would think: they have developed
> OCaml, but do not use it for their own developments....
> ... strange, isn't it?

I think you don't quite realize how big an institute the INRIA is :

http://www.inria.fr/inria/enbref.en.html

Plus, there are a variety of other (domain-specific, mostly) languages
developed by INRIA teams, and anyway there's no reason to enforce the
use of OCaml in all INRIA projects. That would even be strongly
counter-productive, since I don't think you can find 2800 scientists
in the country (covering all IT fields) who know OCaml well enough. As
frustrating as it may seem, most teams are actually using mainstream
languages.

Cheers,

Stéphane L.

-- 
I'm the kind of guy that until it happens, I won't worry about it. -
R.H. RoY05, MVP06

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Oliver Bandel wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> 
> the program Scilab, a Matlab-clone,
> written by INRIA, is written in C,


Psilab is Ocaml (plus C and Fortran libraries):

    http://psilab.sourceforge.net/


Erik
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Jon Harrop]

On Saturday 19 September 2009 08:39:14 Stéphane Lescuyer wrote:
> > ...and from INRIA's view I would think: they have developed
> > OCaml, but do not use it for their own developments....
> > ... strange, isn't it?
>
> I think you don't quite realize how big an institute the INRIA is :
>
> http://www.inria.fr/inria/enbref.en.html

On the contrary, the bigger INRIA is the more valuable it would be for them to 
eat their own dog food. If OCaml had more users in INRIA it would garner more 
useful feedback and would be more likely to get funding.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Philippe Wang]

Why not use Bigloo? It's a efficient scheme compiler, also developed at INRIA.
http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Bigloo/

Just kidding,
-- 
Philippe Wang
   mail@philippewang.info



On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 19 September 2009 08:39:14 Stéphane Lescuyer wrote:
>> > ...and from INRIA's view I would think: they have developed
>> > OCaml, but do not use it for their own developments....
>> > ... strange, isn't it?
>>
>> I think you don't quite realize how big an institute the INRIA is :
>>
>> http://www.inria.fr/inria/enbref.en.html
>
> On the contrary, the bigger INRIA is the more valuable it would be for them to
> eat their own dog food. If OCaml had more users in INRIA it would garner more
> useful feedback and would be more likely to get funding.
>
> --
> Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e
>

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Oliver Bandel]

Hi,



Zitat von "Philippe Wang" <philippe.wang.lists@gmail.com>:

> Why not use Bigloo? It's a efficient scheme compiler, also developed  
> at INRIA.
> http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Bigloo/
[...]

I looked at bigloo before I came to OCaml.

I decided against it.
Not only because of schem's ((((())))()(()()))))))-terror ;-)
but also (main reason) because of this:


"Bigloo produces C files. C code uses the C stack,
  so some programs can?t be properly tail recursive.
  Nevertheless all simple tail recursions are compiled
  without stack consumption."


This was not really inspiring confidence.
Even if I did not really know much about that topic tailrec-topic,
it seemed to be a basic feature, and other scheme implementations did  
not have such a limitation...
...then I had contact to Haskell and Ocaml and decided OCaml to be my  
favourite.

I never looked at bigloo again, but that quote above is from the  
bigloo-documentation that I just now downloaded to assure the point  
has not changed during the last years.



>
> Just kidding,
[...]


oh,  I saw this too late;-)


Ciao,
    Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Oliver Bandel]

Zitat von "Jon Harrop" <jon@ffconsultancy.com>:

> On Saturday 19 September 2009 08:39:14 Stéphane Lescuyer wrote:
>> > ...and from INRIA's view I would think: they have developed
>> > OCaml, but do not use it for their own developments....
>> > ... strange, isn't it?
>>
>> I think you don't quite realize how big an institute the INRIA is :
>>
>> http://www.inria.fr/inria/enbref.en.html
>
> On the contrary, the bigger INRIA is the more valuable it would be  
> for them to
> eat their own dog food.
[...]


...yes, it's like MickeySoft running Linux- and BSD-servers... :-)
  ( they really do )

Ciao,
    Oliver

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Adrien]

Hi,

There is probably a simple and yet very good reason scilab isn't
written in ocaml. Its predecessor was started in the 80s and scilab
itself was started in 90s[1], I guess that rules out ocaml and caml
which was only 5 years-old at that time. ;-)

Now that doesn't explain why it is moving to java instead of ocaml but
I think other messages in this thread already do. :)

[1] http://www.scilab.org/platform/index_platform.php?page=history

 ---

Adrien Nader

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[rixed]

> ...why is that program not written with INRIA's Ocaml?

Probably for the same reason than all Princeton university
programs are not written in SML/NJ (so I guess) ?

Re: [Caml-list] Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Jon Harrop]

On Sunday 20 September 2009 10:08:48 rixed@happyleptic.org wrote:
> > ...why is that program not written with INRIA's Ocaml?
>
> Probably for the same reason than all Princeton university
> programs are not written in SML/NJ (so I guess) ?

INRIA aren't using OCaml because SML/NJ sucks? ;-)

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e

Re: Scilab: Why not written in OCaml?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> ...why is that program not written with INRIA's Ocaml?
> Probably for the same reason than all Princeton university
> programs are not written in SML/NJ (so I guess) ?

They're not?


        Stefan