* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
@ 2003-03-14 22:14 Daniel M. Albro
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Daniel M. Albro @ 2003-03-14 22:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
Someone (sorry, deleted the email before I could use it to
respond) mentioned that they had thought that the first edition of
SICP used Lisp (this isn't true, by the way -- I used the first
edition when I took 6.001 way back when and it was Scheme). Maybe
you were thinking of _The_Little_Lisper_, which has since changed
to _The_Little_Schemer_ (with the sequel _The_Seasoned_Schemer_).
That book is a pretty good introduction to functional programming,
by the way, albeit a bit mind-bending when it starts going into
Y-Combinators and stuff like that. I still haven't managed to finish
_The_Seasoned_Schemer_. They have a book called "_The_Little_MLer_"
that talks about ML and has a section on how to convert their code
into OCaml, but it's not really as good as the Scheme version; it
spends too much time on the specifics of ML, really. Maybe that's
appropriate, but then it should be longer so they can get all of the
nice lambda calculus in.
--
Daniel M. Albro <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
@ 2003-03-15 16:27 Oliver Bandel
2003-03-15 17:55 ` Sergey Goldgaber
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-15 16:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 07:43:53PM -0600, Tushar Samant wrote:
> 02003-03-11 | Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> writes:
> > have to learn it. This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml:
> > there is no ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to
>
> Well said. I have had haphazard formal training in programming,
> and until I arrived at the idea of informally reasoning out type
> inference I essentially could not go beyond print_string(). This
> is a type of thing which can go in "Ocaml for Dummies". As another
> example, take type constructors. Here is their first occurrence in
> the proposed O'Reilly book:
>
> In contrast with tuples or records, which correspond to a Cartesian
> product, the declaration of a sum type corresponds to a union of sets.
> Different types (for example integers or character strings) are gathered
> into a single type. The various members of the sum are distinguished by
> -constructors-, which support on the one hand, as their name indicates,
> construction of values of this type and on the other hand, thanks to
> pattern matching, access to the components of these values. To apply
> a constructor to an argument is to indicate that the value returned
> belongs to this new type.
>
> A programmer who is constantly asked to parse xml, make database
> queries etc at work is not going to be sympathetic to this.
Well, maybe it's better that he is not. :)
> And
> no considerations of why other ways of doing it lead to a stronger
> or weaker system are going to sway him. But a Dummies book, hand-
> waving a constructor away as a flag or label, might. The third and
> last example is the introduction of structures in the reference manual:
>
> A primary motivation for modules is to package together related
> definitions (such as the definitions of a data type and associated
> operations over that type) and enforce a consistent naming scheme
> for these definitions. This avoids running out of names or acci-
> dentally confusing names. Such a package is called a -structure-
> and is introduced by the struct...end construct, which contains
> an arbitrary sequence of definitions. The structure is usually
> given a name with the module binding.
Well, I don't think it's a good idea to throw such (imho hard) stuff
away. A better presentation will be a way to go.
I'm happy to have books like the O'Reilley-book (even if it
sometimes sounds different, when I criticize it). They use
the language, which is necessary to explain something.
But it sometimes (or often) could be more well explained to
peiople who are not so familiar with this sort of thinking.
It's IMHO not a problem that there is to learn a lot.
The only problem IMHO is, if there are no texts and/or people,
who I can ask to go further.
When things are complicated,and different and unknown, then
it is not a good idea to oversimplify.
It's better, when explaining the complicated/new/unknown
in more detail.
So I had found some papers, not all covering my knowledge-level,
but each of them is interesting (some has helped me, others
may will help me later, when I have more experience/knowledge in
the FP-area).
These texts I have found:
- The documentation, coming with OCaml (Reference != learning papers)
- Tutorial: stephan.html (very good intro to start first steps!)
- Caml quick reference guide (good idea, but layout could be better)
- An introductional text, which has helped me a lot before the OCaml
book in english was put on the server. I don't know who has written
it, because the author has not written his name/mailaddres into it.
The first two sentences in this paper: "This documentation is an
introduction to ML programming, specifically for the OCaml
implementation. In CS134a, we used C (and variations) to specify
processes, monitors, semaphores, devices and more." (and so on)
(Could be better, with a table of content and an index; but to start
it's much better than the O'Reilley book, because of a lot of
examples.)
- O'Reilley-OCaml-book (good for gaining an overview on the language)
- Didier Remy: Using, Understanding, and Unraveling The OCaml Language
(Sometimes I understand some paragraphs. Good work, but is more
a paper for the OCaml-gurus with theoretical background, but
neverheless interesting and some example code is used there too.)
If there are books, explaining how to go from imperative
non-computer-studied person to a person who understands this
text fully, please let me know...
There are a lot of papers, but there are too much gaps between
the one knowledge (and it's representation) and the other.
Filling the gaps would be a way, nut dumbing down!
Ciao,
Oliver
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-15 16:27 Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-15 17:55 ` Sergey Goldgaber
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Sergey Goldgaber @ 2003-03-15 17:55 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Oliver Bandel, caml-list
--- Oliver Bandel <oliver@first.in-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> - An introductional text, which has helped me a lot before the OCaml
> book in english was put on the server. I don't know who has
> written it, because the author has not written his name/mailaddres
> into it.
> The first two sentences in this paper: "This documentation is an
> introduction to ML programming, specifically for the OCaml
> implementation. In CS134a, we used C (and variations) to specify
> processes, monitors, semaphores, devices and more." (and so on)
> (Could be better, with a table of content and an index; but to
> start it's much better than the O'Reilley book, because of a lot
of
> examples.)
It looks like this is Jason Hickey's "Introduction to the Objective
Caml
Programming Language"
--Sergey
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* [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity]
@ 2003-03-13 14:39 Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 16:35 ` [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-13 14:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
----- Forwarded message from oliver -----
To: Michael Schuerig <schuerig@acm.org>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 02:34:16AM +0100, Michael Schuerig wrote:
> On Thursday 13 March 2003 00:53, Oliver Bandel wrote:
>
> [misadventure with Tk]
> > But: I found out that this terrible OO-stuff is - again -
> > a horror!
>
> Are you sure the problem was with the OO part? It's hard to assess this,
[...]
OK, thanks for the links, I will browse them.
But nevertheless I'm looking for OCaml-like solutions.
And the Tk-stuff looks weird to me.
> > (I have seen mess in Tcl/Tk-programming as well as
> > in OO-stuff for other applications (that was Java-stuff),
> > at least if the objects were splitted into too small
> > pieces (design-question; OO-gurus may tell you more abot this
> > problem)).
>
> No guru here, but someone who thinks it's a good idea to split things
> into individual pieces that each do a single thing and can be tested
> separately.
Yes, you even can write parsers in OO, and there are
Design Patterns for it.
But functional programming makes more sense to me here.
Well, in GUIs there OO does makes sense.
But using a more functional approach might help here too.
>
>
> > If there would be a more FP-like approach to GUI-programming
> > - and that is what you have mentioned above with "what OCaml
> > can contribute to GUI-programming" - then this would help
> > a lot.
>
> [GUI ideas snipped]
>
> You're mostly dealing with the (comparatively) easy part: visual
> appearance. The hard part is setting things in motion: Reacting to user
> inputs and actions.
> Displaying data consistently (even after changes
> done in another place).
I added this too.
There are functions which are bind to each
appearence of a GUI-object.
Look at the <function_call arg>
stuff.
When I can't express how it has to look like
to match my needs, then the reason is, that even
well-experienced FP/OOP/IP-people have there no
functional solution.
If I had one, I would not ask for it while explaining,
what I'm looking for. If I would know how to solve it,
I had written a solution or a paper about such a project.
Well, what I have written in my examples looks more like
an aequivalent to tools like lex/yacc are and maybe could be called
guilex/guiyacc.
>
> There are broadly tested and published ways of dealing with GUIs in the
> OO way. MVC, which I already mentioned, is the arch-pattern in this
> regard. Common OO languages help, as the idea of reactive objects that
> handle messages is natural to them.
Yes, that is the problem with OO: sometimes problems are bloating
up, when splitting up problems into objects.
For GUIs OO might be a good choice; but as long as it is
not tested that FP doesn't help here, I will insist on
such a solution.
>
> I've only had very little exposure to purely-functional UIs. Several
> years ago I looked into how GUIs are done in Clean. It was interesting,
> possibly mind-expanding -- but, at least to me, far from intuitive.
There is at least one GUI-approach with Haskell.
Looked very clean and good, but needs Haskell-experience
(and Monads-stuff). So I have this in mind, and maybe
come back later to this.
There was no object-mess.
[...]
> [Typical database + GUI enterprise applications]
> > > Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
> > > over, say, Java and J2EE?
> >
> > See above.
>
> No, unfortunately not. You speculate a lot, but don't provide any usable
> solutions.
When there are hundreds of FP-programmers do not offer solutions
(not counted the one haskell-approach),
and many-thousands of OO-programmers are throwing around their
OO-mess, how should I (not computer science studied; have studied
electrical engeneering) provide a solution?
When looking at the code, I know what's good and wrong, even
if I'm not able to find the correct words in computer-science
terms. (But even 95% of those computer studied people would
not be able to do that; and worse: they would not be able
to see the difference in the code.)
Writing in FP is like having functions, that behave
determined; when looking at OO-stuff, it looks like
a stochastical process.
Well I like stochastics-stuff, and markov modells
are nice. :) But there is a difference, when I want
to program. Then I like it non-stochastical.
And that's the reason, why I like that FP-stuff.
It's not dividing things apart, which should be handled
as a whole.
> Not that you're required to, of course. But current OO
> languages do have proven ways of dealing with the problems you've
> encountered.
OK, I will look at your links.
[...]
> > > Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where
> > > the advantages OCaml provides are far more important?
> >
> > There are many areas, where OCaml could be important.
>
> Being important is an interesting property in a research context. It
> doesn't make a language popular.
I'm now a t a point, where the popularity is not so much a matter
to me. I want to learn and to use that language.
If other people want not, it's their problem.
Maybe with the right marketing/communication, you also can
write OCaml-programs and sell them.
And I'm not part of a team. I work as a one-person-team.
So I have not disadvantagesm, but advantages, when I use
OCaml, and others not. :)
> The practically interesting areas are
> those, where OCaml provides a significant advantage over other
> languages.
It does provide significant advantages, as I recently
found out even in comparing with Perl - and I used
Str-module in the OCaml-part and Perl on the other side.
The OCaml-stuff was clearer in code and faster developed.
If you had asked me this in the beginnings of my OCaml-
journey, I would have said (and I had said that), that
I think, that OCaml might be good for larger projects,
but not for scrippting.
But even there it is better!
It provides significant adcantage(s) and that makes
the language important (to me).
> These may well be areas deserving of the moniker "difficult
> computing" (as quoted by Xavier in this thread). As a case in point, I
> remember Markus Mottl explaining recently in comp.lang.functional ("AI
> and functional programming") why he chose OCaml.
Thanks for that hint.
I will read his articles.
(But I don't think that he will apologize OO there... well let's look.)
Ciao,
Oliver
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 14:39 [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity] Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-13 16:35 ` Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michael Schuerig @ 2003-03-13 16:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Thursday 13 March 2003 15:39, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> Well, in GUIs there OO does makes sense.
> But using a more functional approach might help here too.
Yes, "might". But apparently, there's currently no rational reason to
prefer FP over OO for GUIs.
> For GUIs OO might be a good choice; but as long as it is
> not tested that FP doesn't help here, I will insist on
> such a solution.
If your mind is set for adventure, you can hope for it and go FP full
hog. As a general advices this would be irresponsible.
> > [Typical database + GUI enterprise applications]
> >
> > > > Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
> > > > over, say, Java and J2EE?
> > >
> > > See above.
> >
> > No, unfortunately not. You speculate a lot, but don't provide any
> > usable solutions.
>
> When there are hundreds of FP-programmers do not offer solutions
> (not counted the one haskell-approach),
> and many-thousands of OO-programmers are throwing around their
> OO-mess, how should I (not computer science studied; have studied
> electrical engeneering) provide a solution?
"OO-mess"?
(1) Would you be able to distinguish a good OO-solution _that you don't
understand_ from a bad OO-solution?
(2) Don't expect good OO to be any easier than good FP.
(3) There *are* good OO-solutions for UI programming. Why are you
convinced that there are even better FP ones? Currently there don't
seem to be, otherwise I'd like to learn about them. Ideally, such an FP
solution would be not only just as good as the OO counterpart, but
instead would be markedly better. It's not much help, if one can say,
"Look, finally I can do just the same as you".
> When looking at the code, I know what's good and wrong,
> Writing in FP is like having functions, that behave
> determined; when looking at OO-stuff, it looks like
> a stochastical process.
Are you comparing code that does the same? Same task? Same complexity?
> > Being important is an interesting property in a research context.
> > It doesn't make a language popular.
>
> I'm now a t a point, where the popularity is not so much a matter
> to me. I want to learn and to use that language.
> If other people want not, it's their problem.
Ah, well, but this thread is not concerned with you personally. It
started with someone's wish of OCaml being more popular. I guess, the
point I'm trying to make is that FP/OCaml won't become more popular in
an area where it's only just as good as established OO languages and
techniques.
> If you had asked me this in the beginnings of my OCaml-
> journey, I would have said (and I had said that), that
> I think, that OCaml might be good for larger projects,
> but not for scrippting.
>
> But even there it is better!
So, then let's push it there.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig All good people read good books
mailto:schuerig@acm.org Now your conscience is clear
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/ --Tanita Tikaram, "Twist In My Sobriety"
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
@ 2003-03-13 7:09 Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 16:48 ` Neel Krishnaswami
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
0 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Daniel M. Albro @ 2003-03-13 7:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
I thought I might comment a bit on this thread as a recent
learner of OCaml, which I've finally managed to learn at least well
enough to write a nice (in my opinion) MCFG (multiple
context free grammar) chart parser in it. I don't think the language is
inherently any more difficult to learn than any other (well, maybe
difficult to learn ALL of), but for non-French speakers the lack of
introductory material is a problem. I tried off and on (mostly
off) to learn the language for a year or two before getting it, and
the thing that allowed me to easily learn the language was the
recent translation of the O'Reilly book into English. If they
ever publish the thing in English (I guess there's no agreement to
do so), I think the language will begin to take off outside of
France, because of what I think is the language's natural nitch -- it's
a rapid prototyping language (by which I just mean that it's a very high
level language and takes care of garbage collecting, etc.) that produces
fast code. Lots of recent converts have been brought in
for that very reason, mostly by Doug Bagley's language comparison
page.
Of course there are areas where the language or its development
environment might be improved, and hopefully this would help with
the popularity problem -- the debugger is rather nonintuitive and could
use random extra features; I've found it a bit difficult to work with.
I also hope that the stream parsing [< >] syntax stuff will get put back
into the main language and made parseable by ocamldep, that the
imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some
expanded loop features like break statements, and that someone will do a
wxWindows port. But these are minor points. The main thing is to
keep pushing at the compiled code speed, availability of nice
libraries, and good development environment that the language already
has. Oh, and to advertise them!
--
Daniel M. Albro <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 7:09 Daniel M. Albro
@ 2003-03-13 16:48 ` Neel Krishnaswami
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Neel Krishnaswami @ 2003-03-13 16:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Daniel M. Albro; +Cc: caml-list
Daniel M. Albro writes:
>
> I also hope that the stream parsing [< >] syntax stuff will get put
> back into the main language and made parseable by ocamldep [...]
You can already do this! Just add a '-pp camlp4o' argument to the
ocamldep command line, like this:
ocamldep -pp camlp4o [whatever] > .depend
--
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@alum.mit.edu
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 7:09 Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 16:48 ` Neel Krishnaswami
@ 2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
2003-03-13 21:36 ` Daniel M. Albro
` (2 more replies)
1 sibling, 3 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Karl Zilles @ 2003-03-13 21:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Daniel M. Albro; +Cc: caml-list
Daniel M. Albro wrote:
> imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some
> expanded loop features like break statements,
You can always implement a break statement as an exception:
exception Break;;
try for i = 1 to 10 do
if i == 5 then raise Break
done with Break -> ();;
As an exception, you could (if you wanted) include special case handling
for the break, or create a more aptly named exception and pass through
data.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
@ 2003-03-13 21:36 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 21:42 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 21:53 ` Brian Hurt
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Daniel M. Albro @ 2003-03-13 21:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Karl Zilles; +Cc: caml-list
Yeah, I know, but in time testing I've noticed (I think) that
exception Break;;
try for i = 1 to 10 do
if i = 5 then raise Break
done with Break -> ();;
is slower than the (ugly) equivalent
let i = ref 1 in
while !i <= 10 do
if !i = 5 then i := 11;
incr i
done;;
On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 13:29, Karl Zilles wrote:
> Daniel M. Albro wrote:
> > imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some
> > expanded loop features like break statements,
>
> You can always implement a break statement as an exception:
>
> exception Break;;
>
> try for i = 1 to 10 do
> if i == 5 then raise Break
> done with Break -> ();;
>
> As an exception, you could (if you wanted) include special case handling
> for the break, or create a more aptly named exception and pass through
> data.
--
Daniel M. Albro <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
2003-03-13 21:36 ` Daniel M. Albro
@ 2003-03-13 21:42 ` Daniel M. Albro
[not found] ` <15985.1204.814698.939943@h00045a4799d6.ne.client2.attbi.com>
2003-03-13 21:53 ` Brian Hurt
2 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Daniel M. Albro @ 2003-03-13 21:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Karl Zilles; +Cc: caml-list
Hmm... Apparently I'm a liar. OK, I take it back. Doing your
version 1 billion times takes 25 seconds on my machine, and my version
takes 29 seconds. I still think a break statement would look nicer.
- Dan
On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 13:29, Karl Zilles wrote:
> Daniel M. Albro wrote:
> > imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some
> > expanded loop features like break statements,
>
> You can always implement a break statement as an exception:
>
> exception Break;;
>
> try for i = 1 to 10 do
> if i == 5 then raise Break
> done with Break -> ();;
>
> As an exception, you could (if you wanted) include special case handling
> for the break, or create a more aptly named exception and pass through
> data.
--
Daniel M. Albro <albro@humnet.ucla.edu>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
2003-03-13 21:36 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 21:42 ` Daniel M. Albro
@ 2003-03-13 21:53 ` Brian Hurt
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hurt @ 2003-03-13 21:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Karl Zilles; +Cc: Daniel M. Albro, caml-list
On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Karl Zilles wrote:
> Daniel M. Albro wrote:
> > imperative side of the language will get fleshed out a bit with some
> > expanded loop features like break statements,
>
> You can always implement a break statement as an exception:
>
> exception Break;;
>
> try for i = 1 to 10 do
> if i == 5 then raise Break
> done with Break -> ();;
>
> As an exception, you could (if you wanted) include special case handling
> for the break, or create a more aptly named exception and pass through
> data.
How efficient is this vr.s rewritting the loop as a tail recursion? I.e.:
let rec loop idx =
if (idx == 10) then () (* exit the loop *)
else if special_case(idx) then () (* early exit of the loop *)
else
begin
foo(idx);
loop (idx + 1)
end
in
loop 1
Naturally, instead of returning unit, the function can return whatever.
All for loops can be rewritten as while loops, and all while loops can be
rewritten as tail recursive functions.
What I'm worried about is the costs of throwing an exception. This isn't
C++ (where throwing an exception needs to unroll the stack, calling all
the correct destructors, and can therefor be quite expensive), but that
doesn't mean exceptions are 'cheap'. Exceptions, by definition, are
exceptional. Were I writting the optimizer, I'd freely assume that any
code path that ends in throwing an exception is not a critical path and
can be slow.
Brian
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* [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity]
@ 2003-03-12 23:53 Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 1:34 ` [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-12 23:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
Well, forgotten the List.
Was there a reply-to?
Normally the message goes to the list...
well... anoying...
Ciao,
Oliver
----- Forwarded message from oliver -----
To: Michael Schuerig <schuerig@acm.org>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:34:34PM +0100, Michael Schuerig wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 March 2003 19:08, Alwyn Goodloe wrote:
> > I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do
> > in industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't
> > care about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they
> > can't draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases.
>
> Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages
> and database access?
YES!
> Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is
> mostly yes.
...hmhhh... I hoped for a different statement. :(
> That being as it is, would things in industry be that much
> better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise
> applications?
Well, some days ago I recently found out, that I once
had tried to play around with Ocaml and it's tk-binding.
Well, I've forgotten that experiments (I like CLI :))
and explored them again.
And it's relativley few lines of code for that functionality
(well, maybe Tcl has vewer lines in this special task, I think,
but I have not compared it with tcl-scripts).
But: I found out that this terrible OO-stuff is - again -
a horror!
Each little detail needs it's own object and message.
This is terrible.
Maybe it is possible to set global parameters for the Tk-
variables, like style-sheets or something like this
(I think in Tcl/TK it was possible to set such default-values).
But if not thinking abot this, I have seen *again* that
OO-stryle of programming yields to a cluttered code,
at least when using it for setting Tk-GUI-parameters.
But maybe there could be a better interface?
I have not explored in detail, if it is the Tk, or
the OO-stuff, that makes the code a mess, but I think,
both approaches are part of the mess!
(I have seen mess in Tcl/Tk-programming as well as
in OO-stuff for other applications (that was Java-stuff),
at least if the objects were splitted into too small
pieces (design-question; OO-gurus may tell you more abot this
problem)).
If there would be a more FP-like approach to GUI-programming
- and that is what you have mentioned above with "what OCaml
can contribute to GUI-programming" - then this would help
a lot.
Maybe it is possible to put typographic conventions in a
functional form (ask Mr. Knuth, please) and write a function,
that creates values (e.g. polynomicl stuff? or even only a list
of values?), which can be subsampled from the function (Stream(?))
and setting the GUI-parameters.
So, what is needed for GUI-programming (and where OCaml
could be a good language for) is:
- global style parameters for the GUI ( hey, that's typography! :) )
- a function that can describe typographical stuff
(e.g. how much the size of fonts in "small" depends on the
base fontsize and os on - again, here Mr. Knuth (or typographers,
or the people, who had implemented the many TeX-systems)
could be asked for more details)
- a good interface to this stuff
- trees/hashtables/trees-of-hashtables which binds GUI-objects
to it's *function*s (if a GUI-object would be handled like
functions in FPLs, then you may use one button as a parameter
for a menue (or vice versa).... => higher-order /functional)
GUI-objects; GUI-objects as first-citizens...)
- powerful tools to handle the GUIs
- higher-level functions/language for using it, someting like
Gui.map or so or
List.map #change_button_properties list_of_buttons_in_right_frame
I'm not clear about what OCaml already have here,
but *all* GUI-code (with labltk) I have seen,
was cluttered like any OO-/TK- stuff.
And that's not, what I'm looking for!
There should be a language like
menu1 - submen1 - subsubmen1a "Open File" open_in <arg1>
- subsubmen1b "Show File" print_string <read_in_file arg1>
- subsubmen1c "Close File" close_in <arg1>
- submen2 - subsubmen2a "No function" print_string "no function!"
- subsubmen2b "" raise exception Wrong_key
and this could be added to a declaration of things like:
menu: font=basefont=12pt
submenu: font = smallfont(basefont) (* smallfont is based on
typographical issues...
... maybe you should replace
"basefont" here with menu.font
or menu#font (s. comments at
subsubmenue) *)
subsubmenu: font = tinyfont(basefont) (* instead of basefont you
may write menu#font or
in dot-notation menu.font
so that you have automatic
adaption to changes of the
font of the main-menu *)
IMHO, the ocamlp4 and/or ocamllex/ocamlyacc-Gurus
her on this mailinglist could write such stuff
in some weeks or even some days.
Is such a tool would be available (I hope good documented),
I would use it, because I don't want to do that
I-declare-each-button-individually idiots-tasks.
> Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
> over, say, Java and J2EE?
See above.
If you can handle *many* objects of the gui in a more
functional way, thei would make things easier and really
easy and nice.
> Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where
> the advantages OCaml provides are far more important?
There are many areas, where OCaml could be important.
But sometimes I ask myself: Well, why are we looking for
the big masses? As other peoples stated here: They
are (almost everyone - but not all) idiots.
But maybe they are idiots, because they need to be, to
get the job and stay in job...
Ciao,
Oliver
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 23:53 [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity] Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-13 1:34 ` Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michael Schuerig @ 2003-03-13 1:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Thursday 13 March 2003 00:53, Oliver Bandel wrote:
[misadventure with Tk]
> But: I found out that this terrible OO-stuff is - again -
> a horror!
Are you sure the problem was with the OO part? It's hard to assess this,
without knowing how well-versed you are in OO. As little as I know Tk,
it doesn't make construction of a complex UI for a complex application
particularly easy, but it doesn't make it impossible, either. Java's
Swing, for all it's faults, does a lot for UIs that are well-structured
in themselves and well-separated from the application core. More or
less, it comes down to variations on the MVC (Model-View-Controller)
pattern.
In effect, all I can say is that OO in itself doesn't get in the way --
rather, in my opinion, it helps a lot. Just don't expect Good OO
Programming to be any easier than Good O'Caml Programming.
Recommendation: "Agile Software Development" by Robert C. Martin
(Prentice-Hall, 2003). See
http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articleIndex
> (I have seen mess in Tcl/Tk-programming as well as
> in OO-stuff for other applications (that was Java-stuff),
> at least if the objects were splitted into too small
> pieces (design-question; OO-gurus may tell you more abot this
> problem)).
No guru here, but someone who thinks it's a good idea to split things
into individual pieces that each do a single thing and can be tested
separately.
> If there would be a more FP-like approach to GUI-programming
> - and that is what you have mentioned above with "what OCaml
> can contribute to GUI-programming" - then this would help
> a lot.
[GUI ideas snipped]
You're mostly dealing with the (comparatively) easy part: visual
appearance. The hard part is setting things in motion: Reacting to user
inputs and actions. Displaying data consistently (even after changes
done in another place).
There are broadly tested and published ways of dealing with GUIs in the
OO way. MVC, which I already mentioned, is the arch-pattern in this
regard. Common OO languages help, as the idea of reactive objects that
handle messages is natural to them.
I've only had very little exposure to purely-functional UIs. Several
years ago I looked into how GUIs are done in Clean. It was interesting,
possibly mind-expanding -- but, at least to me, far from intuitive.
> - trees/hashtables/trees-of-hashtables which binds GUI-objects
> to it's *function*s (if a GUI-object would be handled like
> functions in FPLs, then you may use one button as a parameter
> for a menue (or vice versa).... => higher-order /functional)
> GUI-objects; GUI-objects as first-citizens...)
Have a look at this overview of the Swing architecture
http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/architecture/
[Typical database + GUI enterprise applications]
> > Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
> > over, say, Java and J2EE?
>
> See above.
No, unfortunately not. You speculate a lot, but don't provide any usable
solutions. Not that you're required to, of course. But current OO
languages do have proven ways of dealing with the problems you've
encountered.
It's not my intention to disparage OCaml! But I'd like to point out that
there currently doesn't seem to be a reason to believe that OCaml just
needs some more libs and app servers to make a combo that's
*decisively* superior to J2EE (and similar) for a class of very common
applications.
> > Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where
> > the advantages OCaml provides are far more important?
>
> There are many areas, where OCaml could be important.
Being important is an interesting property in a research context. It
doesn't make a language popular. The practically interesting areas are
those, where OCaml provides a significant advantage over other
languages. These may well be areas deserving of the moniker "difficult
computing" (as quoted by Xavier in this thread). As a case in point, I
remember Markus Mottl explaining recently in comp.lang.functional ("AI
and functional programming") why he chose OCaml.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig They tell you that the darkness
mailto:schuerig@acm.org is a blessing in disguise.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/ --Janis Ian, "From Me To You"
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
@ 2003-03-12 17:40 isaac gouy
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: isaac gouy @ 2003-03-12 17:40 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
Why isn't X more popular?
Why isn't X mainstream?
Such fascinating questions! The many answers often
have as much to do with the specific history of a
language, as they do with language features or design.
Then there's philosophy-
'There are many ways of trying to understand programs.
People often rely too much on one way, which is called
"debugging" and consists of running a
partly-understood program to see if it does what you
expected. Another way, which ML advocates, is to
install some means of understanding in the very
programs themselves.'
Robin Milner, preface to The Little MLer.
It's the immediate-gratification of getting
"something" to work (and then making it the "right
something") versus the deferred-pleasure of knowing
that you will have a "correct" program.
best wishes, Isaac
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
@ 2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
2003-03-10 20:43 ` Paul Steckler
` (3 more replies)
0 siblings, 4 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Graham Guttocks @ 2003-03-06 23:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
Greetings,
I discovered OCaml on Doug Bagley's computer shootout page where he
gives it a rave review over all the other languages he evaluated.
After looking into it further, I'm just surprised that OCaml isn't
more popular. It seems to have all the rapid development features of
a scripting language like Python, but unlike scripting languages
offers fast native code like a compiled language. Seemingly the best
of both worlds.
Any ideas why OCaml isn't more well known? Is it just because the
language is not as old as something like Python, or perhaps because
the syntax is more difficult to learn?
=====
Regards,
Graham
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
@ 2003-03-10 20:43 ` Paul Steckler
2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Paul Steckler @ 2003-03-10 20:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Graham Guttocks; +Cc: caml-list
=?iso-8859-1?q?Graham=20Guttocks?= wrote:
> Any ideas why OCaml isn't more well known? Is it just because the
> language is not as old as something like Python, or perhaps because
> the syntax is more difficult to learn?
It's certainly not a question of age. OCaml is derived from
the Caml language, developed back in the 1980's.
-- Paul
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
2003-03-10 20:43 ` Paul Steckler
@ 2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
2003-03-11 0:18 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-17 23:49 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
3 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Gerd Stolpmann @ 2003-03-10 23:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Graham Guttocks; +Cc: caml-list
Am Fre, 2003-03-07 um 00.27 schrieb Graham Guttocks:
> Greetings,
>
> I discovered OCaml on Doug Bagley's computer shootout page where he
> gives it a rave review over all the other languages he evaluated.
>
> After looking into it further, I'm just surprised that OCaml isn't
> more popular. It seems to have all the rapid development features of
> a scripting language like Python, but unlike scripting languages
> offers fast native code like a compiled language. Seemingly the best
> of both worlds.
>
> Any ideas why OCaml isn't more well known? Is it just because the
> language is not as old as something like Python, or perhaps because
> the syntax is more difficult to learn?
I suppose it has to do with the label "functional language", and
these languages are often seen as toys of academic people. I.e. nothing
for the real programmer. Not really sexy.
(Don't try to explain your colleagues the lambda calculus, and that
O'Caml is just an instance of it. This is the wrong way. You get answers
like that the lambda calculus is THE thing they have never understood at
university. There is a learning barrier.)
Of course, this is not true. O'Caml is also an unorthodox imperative
language, and it is attractive enough for some adventures at night
(don't take this too seriously).
I don't think it is the syntax. People are programming in C, with a
really strange syntax, and they take the C syntax as a natural way to
express algorithms. I hear only few complaints about that, so I think
most people just take syntax as it is.
Gerd
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
@ 2003-03-11 0:18 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-17 23:49 ` Graham Guttocks
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hurt @ 2003-03-11 0:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Gerd Stolpmann; +Cc: Graham Guttocks, Ocaml Mailing List
On 11 Mar 2003, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> I don't think it is the syntax. People are programming in C, with a
> really strange syntax, and they take the C syntax as a natural way to
> express algorithms. I hear only few complaints about that, so I think
> most people just take syntax as it is.
Most of my responses have been off list, but for this I feel compelled to
respond on-list :-).
C is a category killer language. For what it is good for, I cannot
envision a language that would be sufficiently better than C to make it
worth learning, let alone implementing.
Note that it's category is 'low-level' programming- embedded software,
operating systems, device drivers, the higher level parts of the BIOS,
etc. Code banging directly on hardware.
C is a very low-level language, very close to the hardware in important
ways. It is, in essence, a model of the Von Neumann architecture. While
still maintaining some semblance of portability and structure. C is a
great choice for when the alternative is assembler.
Note that if you're not at this level, it's idiotic to be using C IMHO.
Things which are plusses at the hardware level become minuses at any other
level- for example, explicit memory management. Explicit memory
management is *required* (for example) in situations where not all memory
is equal- for example, in many OSs (like Windows, HP-UX, and others) you
have swappable memory and nonswappable memory. And your interrupt
handlers had better never touch swappable memory. Or if the memory is
actually a memory mapped I/O device. Etc. But if you're not working at
that level, explicit memory management is only good for introducing bugs.
This is no one perfect programming language.
Brian
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
2003-03-11 0:18 ` Brian Hurt
@ 2003-03-17 23:49 ` Graham Guttocks
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Graham Guttocks @ 2003-03-17 23:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Gerd Stolpmann; +Cc: caml-list
Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de> wrote:
>
> I suppose it has to do with the label "functional language", and
> these languages are often seen as toys of academic
> people. I.e. nothing for the real programmer. Not really sexy.
If this is the case, I wonder why there are so many instructional
texts available for SML (a couple dozen probably). Quite a few for
Haskell as well. Only one (Cousineau & Mauny) for OCaml. Rather
disappointing since OCaml seems more promising than any of these.
=====
Regards,
Graham
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
2003-03-10 20:43 ` Paul Steckler
2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
@ 2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-11 16:26 ` Fred Yankowski
2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
3 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Nicolas Cannasse @ 2003-03-11 1:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Graham Guttocks, caml-list
> I discovered OCaml on Doug Bagley's computer shootout page where he
> gives it a rave review over all the other languages he evaluated.
>
> After looking into it further, I'm just surprised that OCaml isn't
> more popular. It seems to have all the rapid development features of
> a scripting language like Python, but unlike scripting languages
> offers fast native code like a compiled language. Seemingly the best
> of both worlds.
>
> Any ideas why OCaml isn't more well known? Is it just because the
> language is not as old as something like Python, or perhaps because
> the syntax is more difficult to learn?
There is few beginnings of answers two your question :
- some people are telling that you need a PhD to fully understand (and
appreciate) OCaml . That's somehow exagerate, but not so much, since you
need to know at least several programming languages to really understand how
Ocaml is great compared to them :)
- about the syntax, I had some experience of teaching Ocaml to some people,
plus my own Ocaml-learning experience. The current syntax take some time to
get, but is quite good and brief once you got it. But you have to really
understand the underlying typing algorithm when you got a type error. I
think this is perhaps the biggest problem with OCaml syntax right now :
while C/Java will tell you " missing ';' " , Ocaml will simply said " Syntax
Error ". The same goes for typing. Just make write few lines to a beginner,
he will hit into something like " this expression has type unit -> string
but is here used with 'a -> unit" ( quite an obvious error message for
people here, but perhaps a little bit difficult to get when you don't know
the language )
Nicolas Cannasse
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
@ 2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
` (2 more replies)
2003-03-11 16:26 ` Fred Yankowski
1 sibling, 3 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Pierre Weis @ 2003-03-11 10:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Nicolas Cannasse; +Cc: graham_guttocks, caml-list
[...]
To briefly answer your question: I think Caml is not so popular
because there were no big company or extremely important and
successful tool to advertize it all over the place (like Sun did for
Java or Unix for C). In short, Caml is more and more recognized as a
powerful and well-crafted language among expert programmers, but it is
almost unknown to the general audience.
> There is few beginnings of answers two your question :
> - some people are telling that you need a PhD to fully understand (and
> appreciate) OCaml . That's somehow exagerate, but not so much, since you
> need to know at least several programming languages to really understand how
> Ocaml is great compared to them :)
You're right: it seems that people need to suffer a lot by programming
(bugs) in C or Java before they really appreciate Objective Caml.
> - about the syntax, I had some experience of teaching Ocaml to some people,
> plus my own Ocaml-learning experience. The current syntax take some time to
> get, but is quite good and brief once you got it. But you have to really
> understand the underlying typing algorithm when you got a type error. I
> think this is perhaps the biggest problem with OCaml syntax right now :
> while C/Java will tell you " missing ';' " , Ocaml will simply said " Syntax
> Error ".
In this case, you should try camlp4 (ocamlc -pp camlp4o): it very
often gives a fairly good hint about the syntax error (although you
have to know something about the Caml AST to fully benefit from the
error report).
> The same goes for typing. Just make write few lines to a beginner,
> he will hit into something like " this expression has type unit -> string
> but is here used with 'a -> unit" ( quite an obvious error message for
> people here, but perhaps a little bit difficult to get when you don't know
> the language )
You are also right: this language has to be taught before being
profitably used. The darker side of this fact is that conversely, you
have to learn it. This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml:
there is no ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to
pay to use a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
As a long time Caml teacher, I used to start the course with a small
introductory speech that roughly goes like that: «you're smart guys,
all of you; today you are smart {\em and} lucky, since you get the
opportunity to learn the smartest programming language I know, so
smart that it could change your way of thinking about programs and
computers. Indeed, it will not be easy, but you will gain a lot of new
ideas from Caml and this is worth the effort!»
After such an introduction, some students are afraid and some are
enthousiastic; after a while, they all discover that this is plain
true: learning Caml is indeed profitable to the way you deal with
programming problems, but on the other hand, yes, it is not so easy !
Pierre Weis
INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
@ 2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
2003-03-11 16:16 ` David Brown
2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-15 1:43 ` Tushar Samant
2 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Guillaume Marceau @ 2003-03-11 14:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 18:48, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
>
> I suppose it has to do with the label "functional language", and
> these languages are often seen as toys of academic people. I.e.
> nothing for the real programmer. Not really sexy.
What about Python and Ruby? They were both heavily influenced by
functional programming, yet they do not appear to carry the "toy
functional language" stigma.
Is Ocaml special in that respect?
On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 05:23, Pierre Weis wrote:
> [...]
>
> To briefly answer your question: I think Caml is not so popular
> because there were no big company or extremely important and
> successful tool to advertize it all over the place (like Sun did for
> Java or Unix for C). In short, Caml is more and more recognized as a
> powerful and well-crafted language among expert programmers, but it is
> almost unknown to the general audience.
>
Well, since we cannot do much about Ocaml's lack of buzz-word laden
marketing campaign, maybe we should look at other indicator of language
success and work of those.
I believe most of today's mainstream language kick started their
popularity with a killer app :
C was once the only language you could hack Unix with
Java had web applets
Perl had regular expressions
Visual Basic had that really nice beginner-friendly dialog box editor
PHP does server side web page generation.
Tcl had Tk
We could strive to find (or develop) something ocaml can do that cannot
be done with any other mainstream language. Or, alternatively, something
that is an order or two faster in ocaml than in any other language. So
easy in fact, that the time time saved on a single project offsets the
time cost of learning the rudiments ocaml [*].
While writing these lines reminds me of Todd Proebsting's presentation
at LL2.
http://ll2.ai.mit.edu/talks/proebsting.ppt
Among other things, he offered a starter list of domains which are
begging for better support at the programming language level. If only we
could nail one of them solid...
One other unrelated observation on language acceptance:
In the the industry, they accept new languages as their IDE become
usable. Somehow, a solid IDE has become the sign that the language
matured and is now stable enough for industrial usage. Also, by their
own account, industrial coders spent so much time in VC++, they are now
IDE-dependent. IDE in this context means one-key compilation, hypertext
jumps between name usages and definitions, and a tree overview of the
components of the project, context sensitive work completion and context
sensitive help, etc. Ocaml would gain at having an official IDE project
which implement these features.
[*] : Ocaml makes writing compilers a delicacy. Unfortunately, not
enough people write compilers to start a critical mass seed around it.
For now I am selling ocaml as the language of choice to do error prone
data structure gymnastics. This is rather vague and unlikely to trigger
at coder into thinking : "wow, I'm about to do error prone data
structure gymnastics! This is the perfect occasion to learn ocaml!"
--
"In Google non est, ergo non est."
- Guillaume
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
@ 2003-03-11 16:16 ` David Brown
2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: David Brown @ 2003-03-11 16:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Guillaume Marceau; +Cc: caml-list
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 09:27:18AM -0500, Guillaume Marceau wrote:
> We could strive to find (or develop) something ocaml can do that cannot
> be done with any other mainstream language. Or, alternatively, something
> that is an order or two faster in ocaml than in any other language. So
> easy in fact, that the time time saved on a single project offsets the
> time cost of learning the rudiments ocaml [*].
Almost everything I've done in ocaml was an order or two faster to
develop in ocaml than it would have been in another language. I don't
think I was at all that productive while learning ocaml, though.
Dave
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
2003-03-11 16:16 ` David Brown
@ 2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-12 10:51 ` Alex Romadinoff
2003-03-12 18:24 ` Max Kirillov
1 sibling, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Nicolas Cannasse @ 2003-03-12 2:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Guillaume Marceau, caml-list
> One other unrelated observation on language acceptance:
>
> In the the industry, they accept new languages as their IDE become
> usable. Somehow, a solid IDE has become the sign that the language
> matured and is now stable enough for industrial usage. Also, by their
> own account, industrial coders spent so much time in VC++, they are now
> IDE-dependent. IDE in this context means one-key compilation, hypertext
> jumps between name usages and definitions, and a tree overview of the
> components of the project, context sensitive work completion and context
> sensitive help, etc. Ocaml would gain at having an official IDE project
> which implement these features.
You're raising here a remanent subject :)
This had been in my mind (and also in the mind of several other people of
this list I think) since I started with OCaml. Right now, as one of the few
ocaml-windows developpers, I'm editing and compiling Ocaml under Visual
Studio 6. The language is not fully integrated since VC6 does not enable it
( while .Net can do it, but is far more expensive and more difficult to
deploy for a single basic user ). There is the workspace, syntax
highlightning, automatic compilation, one-key compilation start and
compilation-error-jump-to-file+line. So it is right now quite convenient to
work with.
An IDE will require a far more level of integration such as the possibility
to "debug" types visualy when having an error ( e.g. just put your mouse /
cursor on a variable to see its type ) , perhaps an integrated debugger ,
and of course a multiplatform (unix+windows) GUI since doing it from
unix-only won't help people from the industry and doing it for windows only
won't help the large part of the ocaml community.
The problem here is that such kind of editor is more or less a personnal
choice, and if you want the current OCaml+Emacs users to switch to such an
IDE, you'll have to make it fully customizable and add key features that
will make the difference. Quite a challenge.
Nicolas Cannasse
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* RE: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
@ 2003-03-12 10:51 ` Alex Romadinoff
2003-03-12 18:24 ` Max Kirillov
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Alex Romadinoff @ 2003-03-12 10:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 'Nicolas Cannasse', 'Guillaume Marceau', caml-list
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3127 bytes --]
Nicolas,
Why should we switch? In fact, Tuareg or ocaml-mode provides reasonable
IDE based on emacs.
And those IDEs are much betters then those broken VC++. Really.
In fact, Im industry Java programmer and use emacs JDE mode with
ClearCase integration to develop out OSS product. This IDE is better
integrated into our development process than so called industry-strength
IDEs, such as IDEA and Together/J.
I think, emacs provides good framework for building such standard IDE,
and all things, you mentioned, could be easily implemented in it.
Alex
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicolas Cannasse [mailto:warplayer@free.fr]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 5:32 AM
To: Guillaume Marceau; caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
> One other unrelated observation on language acceptance:
>
> In the the industry, they accept new languages as their IDE become
> usable. Somehow, a solid IDE has become the sign that the language
> matured and is now stable enough for industrial usage. Also, by their
> own account, industrial coders spent so much time in VC++, they are
now
> IDE-dependent. IDE in this context means one-key compilation,
hypertext
> jumps between name usages and definitions, and a tree overview of the
> components of the project, context sensitive work completion and
context
> sensitive help, etc. Ocaml would gain at having an official IDE
project
> which implement these features.
You're raising here a remanent subject :)
This had been in my mind (and also in the mind of several other people
of
this list I think) since I started with OCaml. Right now, as one of the
few
ocaml-windows developpers, I'm editing and compiling Ocaml under Visual
Studio 6. The language is not fully integrated since VC6 does not enable
it
( while .Net can do it, but is far more expensive and more difficult to
deploy for a single basic user ). There is the workspace, syntax
highlightning, automatic compilation, one-key compilation start and
compilation-error-jump-to-file+line. So it is right now quite convenient
to
work with.
An IDE will require a far more level of integration such as the
possibility
to "debug" types visualy when having an error ( e.g. just put your mouse
/
cursor on a variable to see its type ) , perhaps an integrated debugger
,
and of course a multiplatform (unix+windows) GUI since doing it from
unix-only won't help people from the industry and doing it for windows
only
won't help the large part of the ocaml community.
The problem here is that such kind of editor is more or less a personnal
choice, and if you want the current OCaml+Emacs users to switch to such
an
IDE, you'll have to make it fully customizable and add key features that
will make the difference. Quite a challenge.
Nicolas Cannasse
-------------------
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-12 10:51 ` Alex Romadinoff
@ 2003-03-12 18:24 ` Max Kirillov
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Max Kirillov @ 2003-03-12 18:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:32:09AM +0900, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> This had been in my mind (and also in the mind of several other people of
> this list I think) since I started with OCaml. Right now, as one of the few
> ocaml-windows developpers, I'm editing and compiling Ocaml under Visual
> Studio 6. The language is not fully integrated since VC6 does not enable it
> ( while .Net can do it, but is far more expensive and more difficult to
> deploy for a single basic user ). There is the workspace, syntax
> highlightning, automatic compilation, one-key compilation start and
> compilation-error-jump-to-file+line. So it is right now quite convenient to
> work with.
>
> An IDE will require a far more level of integration such as the possibility
> to "debug" types visualy when having an error ( e.g. just put your mouse /
> cursor on a variable to see its type ) , perhaps an integrated debugger ,
> and of course a multiplatform (unix+windows) GUI since doing it from
> unix-only won't help people from the industry and doing it for windows only
> won't help the large part of the ocaml community.
>
> The problem here is that such kind of editor is more or less a personnal
> choice, and if you want the current OCaml+Emacs users to switch to such an
> IDE, you'll have to make it fully customizable and add key features that
> will make the difference. Quite a challenge.
>
> Nicolas Cannasse
There is ocamlbrowser in the distribution. It can typecheck and then be
the type browser as you mention it. I dont know how much of it works on
Windows (I surely have seen it started), but the functionality you want
should not be very os-depended. It is based on analysis of typed tree
after successful typecheck.
As a first step, one writing the VS (or whatever) plugin could just
start from here and take some code from ocamlbrowser.
To go further, there are 2 points.
First, there would be nice to dump a typed tree just like the parsetree
by -dparsetree option. It should be easy to do. Then, you can read the
output and do whatever you want with it. (though, it is doubtful
parsing the output to use it in VS-ish ides is easier than adding a
IDE-specific reporter to the compiler)
Then, this all OK when there are no errors. But, when there are some
(and this it what is mostly wanted for IDE), typechecking is aborted and
no information if returned. So, it would be great to have possibility to
freeze the typechecking (or even force it further), getting as much
information as possible. Then, one could see the inferred types and
easily locate the point where they goes wrong. Currently, locating a
typing error it an iterative process -- I insert explicit type
constraint here and there, then compile, then just stare at output and
think, then again. If I could look at typedtree at the moment the typing
error was detected, I suppose this will be much faster.
--
Max
P.S. btw, is the "typecheck at error" done for the other languages. I
know there are alot of languages support for the VS. How many of them
cat acquire information from a wrong source?
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
@ 2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
2003-03-13 8:09 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-15 1:43 ` Tushar Samant
2 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Graham Guttocks @ 2003-03-11 19:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Pierre Weis; +Cc: caml-list
Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:
>
> This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no
> ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use
> a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an
``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
(in English) is pretty poor IMO.
> learning Caml is indeed profitable to the way you deal with
> programming problems, but on the other hand, yes, it is not so easy
In http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/general-eng.html you said:
``Caml is a programming language, easy to learn, easy to use''.
So is it easy or not easy?
=====
Regards,
Graham
http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
- Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
@ 2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
` (2 more replies)
2003-03-13 8:09 ` Pierre Weis
1 sibling, 3 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Richard W.M. Jones @ 2003-03-12 17:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
Cc: caml-list
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 08:02:30AM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:
> >
> > This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no
> > ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use
> > a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
>
> Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
> just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an
> ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
> (in English) is pretty poor IMO.
Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There
is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml.
And please don't start by telling me about the lambda calculus or
higher-order functions.
Start by telling me how to read and write files. How to draw a nice
picture. Go on to tell me how to access my SQL database from an
OCaml application server.
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
PTHRLIB is a library for writing small, efficient and fast servers in C.
HTTP, CGI, DBI, lightweight threads: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/pthrlib/
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
@ 2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
2003-03-12 22:34 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:18 ` Daniel Bünzli
2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
2 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Alwyn Goodloe @ 2003-03-12 18:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Richard W.M. Jones; +Cc: caml-list
I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do in
industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't care
about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they can't
draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases. I think this is
why people will say it takes a while to be productive in OCAML. If you
want to read and write files, access the DB, and draw a screen, then you
probably have to go beyond most introductions to OCAML. Unfortunately,
most developers will just stop there. A book akin to the O Riley Java
networking book would be great as well. There is a lot of cool OCAML stuff
out there for networking - hopefully someone will write a book to spread
the news.
On the other hand there really isn't a good intro to CS in OCAML book in
English. The good texts combiled with the DrScheme environmnet is a big
reason for the use of Scheme at many Universities in the US.
Alwyn
agoodloe@gradient.cis.upenn.edu
On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 08:02:30AM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> > Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:
> > >
> > > This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no
> > > ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use
> > > a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
> >
> > Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
> > just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an
> > ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
> > (in English) is pretty poor IMO.
>
> Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There
> is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml.
>
> And please don't start by telling me about the lambda calculus or
> higher-order functions.
>
> Start by telling me how to read and write files. How to draw a nice
> picture. Go on to tell me how to access my SQL database from an
> OCaml application server.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
> http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
> PTHRLIB is a library for writing small, efficient and fast servers in C.
> HTTP, CGI, DBI, lightweight threads: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/pthrlib/
>
> -------------------
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>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
@ 2003-03-12 22:34 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:13 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Brian Hurt
0 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michael Schuerig @ 2003-03-12 22:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Wednesday 12 March 2003 19:08, Alwyn Goodloe wrote:
> I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do
> in industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't
> care about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they
> can't draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases.
Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages
and database access? Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is
mostly yes. That being as it is, would things in industry be that much
better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise
applications? Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
over, say, Java and J2EE? Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where
the advantages OCaml provides are far more important?
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig Failures to use one's frontal lobes
mailto:schuerig@acm.org can result in the loss of them.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/ --William H. Calvin
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 22:34 ` Michael Schuerig
@ 2003-03-12 23:13 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Brian Hurt
1 sibling, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Martin Weber @ 2003-03-12 23:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Michael Schuerig; +Cc: caml-list
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:34:34PM +0100, Michael Schuerig wrote:
> (...)
> Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages
> and database access? Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is
> mostly yes.
I'm working next to asic designers, and they give a shit about the web,
database access and guis :) They want scriptability and a clean programming
interface instead ... (and yeah, they appreciate good guis).
On the other hand, they are electrical engineers, so I guess they are not
too keen on learning yet another language - most proprietary tools they
use offer tcl as the scripting language, so that's a de facto standard -
and they're not interested in typing(1) around either ... as soon as it works
it's fine :) (see pentium bug - it's still there... but patched:-))
> That being as it is, would things in industry be that much
> better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise
> applications?
> (...)
I don't know what usually classifies as 'enterprise application' but I
think what I'm doing is one - application(s) written solely for the use
within the producing corner - no end user will ever see it (except if
we release the stuff as opensource, but that's still being debated :).
That said, in *my* environment I don't think (oca)ml really has any
chance against tcl and/or perl, just because those two (or especially
tcl) are so simple. And I don't think that it can be the intention of
ocaml to get that simple as is tcl...
On the other hand, *I* could write the application in Ocaml, plugging
in both C extensions and (on that way, too) a tcl interpreter while
enabling an ocaml toplevel for the savvy.... hmmm....
but you know.. inherit a ton of C code..
regards,
-martin (taking another couple of notes for the 2.0)
(1) not as in inputting text into the computer, but stumbling over
beginner errors like my beloved +. :)
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 23:13 ` Martin Weber
@ 2003-03-12 23:35 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-13 8:02 ` Alessandro Baretta
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michael Schuerig @ 2003-03-12 23:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Thursday 13 March 2003 00:13, Martin Weber wrote:
> I don't know what usually classifies as 'enterprise application' but
> I think what I'm doing is one - application(s) written solely for the
> use within the producing corner - no end user will ever see it
In my experience, the term "enterprise application" is not used
generically for all custom or behind-the-scenes application used in an
enterprise. Rather, it's used more specifically for applications that
handle large amounts of data managed in databases; stuffing data into
and getting it out of a DB and accomodating business processes while
doing so.
I've been working on this kind of software for a couple of years and
can't say that I'm particularly attracted to it. To be sure, I
recognize that there are interesting aspects to it, but it's not what I
myself find interesting. Also, as I said before, I don't see that OCaml
provides a decisive advantage for *this* kind of software.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig The usual excuse for our most unspeakable
mailto:schuerig@acm.org public acts is that they are necessary.
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/ --Judith N. Shklar
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Michael Schuerig
@ 2003-03-13 8:02 ` Alessandro Baretta
2003-03-13 10:23 ` Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Alessandro Baretta @ 2003-03-13 8:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Michael Schuerig, Ocaml
Michael Schuerig wrote:
> On Thursday 13 March 2003 00:13, Martin Weber wrote:
>
>
> I've been working on this kind of software for a couple of years and
> can't say that I'm particularly attracted to it. To be sure, I
> recognize that there are interesting aspects to it, but it's not what I
> myself find interesting. Also, as I said before, I don't see that OCaml
> provides a decisive advantage for *this* kind of software.
Actually, I must say that it does provide THE decisive
advantage over all other tools I reviewed, at least in terms
of Web applications. After developing the Xcaml sytem, which
is currently on Sourceforge--and wanting a little bugfix
update, coming up--my company is now able to release a new
custom "enterprise application" to the customer in more or
less one week's time.
The Xcaml system, which is basically nothing other than
XML/HTML-embedded Ocaml, is giving us the edge to give our
customers whatever they ask for the moment they ask for it.
I think that Ocaml is a little more than the "the tool of
choice for the discriminating hacker": it's tool of choice
for professional business software development, at least if
your employees are endowed with a measure of cognitive
abilities. It does take a little thinking to get the hang of
Ocaml--and Xcaml equivalently--but not that much after all.
Hey, it's an imperative language at the end!
Alex
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 8:02 ` Alessandro Baretta
@ 2003-03-13 10:23 ` Michael Schuerig
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michael Schuerig @ 2003-03-13 10:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Thursday 13 March 2003 09:02, Alessandro Baretta wrote:
> Michael Schuerig wrote:
> > On Thursday 13 March 2003 00:13, Martin Weber wrote:
> >
> >
[database + GUI variety enterprise applications]
> > I've been working on this kind of software for a couple of years
> > and can't say that I'm particularly attracted to it. To be sure, I
> > recognize that there are interesting aspects to it, but it's not
> > what I myself find interesting. Also, as I said before, I don't see
> > that OCaml provides a decisive advantage for *this* kind of
> > software.
>
> Actually, I must say that it does provide THE decisive
> advantage over all other tools I reviewed, at least in terms
> of Web applications. After developing the Xcaml sytem, which
> is currently on Sourceforge--and wanting a little bugfix
> update, coming up--my company is now able to release a new
> custom "enterprise application" to the customer in more or
> less one week's time.
I'm not familiar with the kind of project that can be done from start to
finish that short a time. I just can't say how common they are. But
anyway, great if OCaml can give such a boost, there.
My experience is from projects eating up several person years of effort.
There coding speed isn't necessarily the limiting factor.
Michael
--
Michael Schuerig All good people read good books
mailto:schuerig@acm.org Now your conscience is clear
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/ --Tanita Tikaram, "Twist In My Sobriety"
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 22:34 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:13 ` Martin Weber
@ 2003-03-12 23:35 ` Brian Hurt
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hurt @ 2003-03-12 23:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Michael Schuerig; +Cc: caml-list
On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Michael Schuerig wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 March 2003 19:08, Alwyn Goodloe wrote:
> > I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do
> > in industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't
> > care about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they
> > can't draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases.
>
> Is software development in industry only about GUI screens, web pages
> and database access? Well, from my own experience, I fear the answer is
> mostly yes.
Comming from the industry- mostly, yes. Completely, no.
> That being as it is, would things in industry be that much
> better if OCaml had everything it takes for writing enterprise
> applications? Could OCaml in this area bring such a big improvement
> over, say, Java and J2EE? Or are there other -- niche? -- areas where
> the advantages OCaml provides are far more important?
>
I could easily see an Ocaml J2EE. If you read the vapor in the right way,
.NET could be considered a language-agnostic J2EE (that already has it's
own Ocaml-variant in F#). Having had some experience with Microsoft,
Microsoft's products, and Microsoft's history of product announcements,
I'd recommend a wait and see approach. However, the concept is doable in
theory.
It's hard to estimate how ignorant the "bottom of the barrel" programmers
are. My father was teaching a class recently, attempting to teach OO
programming to a bunch of Cobol programmers in Visual Basic (that last
wasn't mentioned until after he had signed on). He was a more than a
little surprised when programmers with decades of 'experience' didn't know
what a for loop was. Twenty years in the industry, and they'd never had
to use one.
Of course, this also raises the question of what a programmer is. I have
a friend who considers herself a technical writer/buisness analyst. For
one reason or another, she does an awful lot of Visual Basic scripting.
She doesn't use for loops either- on the other hand, she also doesn't
consider herself a programmer, let alone an experienced senior software
engineer.
Brian
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
@ 2003-03-12 23:18 ` Daniel Bünzli
2003-03-12 23:47 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
2 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Daniel Bünzli @ 2003-03-12 23:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Richard W.M. Jones; +Cc: caml-list
> Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There
> is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml.
Books have both the advantage and disadvantage to end in a (more or
less) well structured exposition of whole topic.
Very often what is needed is a way to figure out how you can do this or
that in the language along with relevant pointers in the documentation
graph. This is why I think that a bunch of well edited online tutorials
would do a better job; assuming that the reader has a minimal knowledge
of the language, something like the first two chapter of the ocaml
reference manual with a little more details.
Besides, tutorials can show good programming style, features of the
language, how to set up things (e.g. make a new toplevel), give
background for newbies (e.g. Pcre is a good alternative to Str), etc. I
guess the top level would make that kind of tutorials very enjoyable,
both to write and read.
From simple things --- not too long --- to more complex ones with a
very well defined and pleasing goal.
> Using the socket interface. Show how to build your dummy little
server.
> Using regular expressions (pcre) and i/o. Show how to install the lib
and implement a grep.
> Accessing a database.
> Using the thread library.
...
And well,
> Show how to write a lambda calculus interpreter.
Just little things to help you start playing.
Daniel
P.S. See for example the tutorials available on www.oreilly.com (e.g.
the ones on cocoa / objective-c programming). Of course it's about book
promotion there, but some tutorial are not bad.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 23:18 ` Daniel Bünzli
@ 2003-03-12 23:47 ` Brian Hurt
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hurt @ 2003-03-12 23:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Daniel Bünzli; +Cc: Richard W.M. Jones, caml-list
On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
> Very often what is needed is a way to figure out how you can do this or
> that in the language along with relevant pointers in the documentation
> graph. This is why I think that a bunch of well edited online tutorials
> would do a better job; assuming that the reader has a minimal knowledge
> of the language, something like the first two chapter of the ocaml
> reference manual with a little more details.
I have a theory (backed up with a fair bit of circumstancial evidence)
that a large number of purchasing decisions are influenced by the number
of running feet of books in the local bookstore are dedicated to the
topic. The theory is (as I infer it) 'if I have a problem, I'll simply
buy a book to tell me how to solve it. After all, look at all of these
books! Surely one of them will be what I need!'
Having *the* perfect introductory book is actually a detriment, as
it discourages other books from entering the field, thus reducing your
runnning foot total. Likewise, being intuitive or easy to understand is
also a detriment, as this makes both for fewer books and for slimmer
books. Much better to have multi-thousand page tomes (tombs?). And
naturally, you can't measure running feet of web pages :-).
Brian
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
2003-03-12 23:18 ` Daniel Bünzli
@ 2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 3:44 ` Graham Guttocks
` (2 more replies)
2 siblings, 3 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: William Lovas @ 2003-03-13 2:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 05:12:43PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 08:02:30AM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> > Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
> > just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an
> > ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
> > (in English) is pretty poor IMO.
>
> Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There
> is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml.
What about the O'Reilly book, "Developing Applications With Objective
Caml"? It's not perfect yet, but the preliminary translation from the
French is available at:
http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/index.html
Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?
> And please don't start by telling me about the lambda calculus or
> higher-order functions.
The O'Reilly book starts in Chapter 2 with the basics of functional
programming. This makes sense because that's really what sets O'Caml
apart from other more mainstream languages.
> Start by telling me how to read and write files.
Chapter 3 goes into the imperative aspects, including I/O.
> How to draw a nice picture
Chapter 5: The Graphics Interface.
> Go on to tell me how to access my SQL database from an
> OCaml application server.
Not quite -- but Chapter 6 has several example applications, including one
that models a simple database.
The rest of the book has a very practical feel to it, constantly grounding
itself in real-world examples and applications.
Like i said, it's not quite ideal at this point, but i'm surprised nobody's
mentioned it yet. Would it help O'Caml's cause, do you think, if O'Reilly
were to polish this up and publish it?
cheers,
William
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
@ 2003-03-13 3:44 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-13 9:31 ` Richard W.M. Jones
[not found] ` <20030313095232.GC347@first.in-berlin.de>
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Graham Guttocks @ 2003-03-13 3:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: William Lovas; +Cc: caml-list
William Lovas <wlovas@stwing.upenn.edu> wrote:
> What about the O'Reilly book, "Developing Applications With
> Objective Caml"?
[...]
> Like i said, it's not quite ideal at this point, but i'm surprised
> nobody's mentioned it yet.
I'm not that surprised. I got nothing out of the book when I tried to
read it. It reads like a reference manual, so it may be of more use
once I've learned the language, but it's not an adequate introductory
text IMO.
Despite its brevity, I got more out of:
http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/stephan.html
Then I did the first several sections of the O'Reilly translation.
This clear, explanatory style was much easier to digest.
=====
Regards,
Graham
http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
- Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 3:44 ` Graham Guttocks
@ 2003-03-13 9:31 ` Richard W.M. Jones
[not found] ` <20030313095232.GC347@first.in-berlin.de>
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Richard W.M. Jones @ 2003-03-13 9:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 09:15:17PM -0500, William Lovas wrote:
> What about the O'Reilly book, "Developing Applications With Objective
> Caml"? It's not perfect yet, but the preliminary translation from the
> French is available at:
>
> http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/index.html
>
> Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?
No offence intended to the authors, but it has to be said that I
thought it an entirely unsuitable introduction to the language. Take
a look at the section on Input/Output channels for a good (ie. bad)
example. It takes all the way through to the middle of chapter 3
before we get this section which actually tells you how to do
something practical with the language. Then to find that the
introduction to I/O channels is next to useless - I could find out the
same stuff by reading the header file. At least there's a couple of
rather artificial examples.
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm
http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
MAKE+ is a sane replacement for GNU autoconf/automake. One script compiles,
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <20030313095232.GC347@first.in-berlin.de>]
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
[not found] ` <20030313095232.GC347@first.in-berlin.de>
@ 2003-03-13 20:50 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-14 10:13 ` MikhailFedotov
0 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: William Lovas @ 2003-03-13 20:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Oliver Bandel; +Cc: caml-list
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:52:32AM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> I/O is on page 76, where imperative programming
> is explained.
>
> When looking into K&R's C book, it's in the first chapter
> on the first page to create a feedback from the machine
> with the well-known "hello world"-example...
Well, since C lacks a top-level read-eval-print loop, being able to
do I/O is crucially important early on. Less so with O'Caml -- one
can get right into the interesting bits of the programming language
without having to know a wink of I/O. The necessary evils like I/O
can wait 'til a little bit later... like Chapter 3 :)
Plus, the top-level loop approach introduces a number of important
concepts early on, like expressions, values, and types.
> When you have a functional language and say: Yes, functional
> programming is so genious, but get the I/O not before
> the chapter about imperative programming, then it looks
> not very honestly...
>
> But adding the FP-features as a "what other languages have not"
> (or not so clear) later, this might (not proven it;-)) be
> a beter approach in making the language interesting.
You're basic objection here is that O'Caml is not being taught in the
same way that other programming languages have been taught in the past.
Should it be? Maybe O'Caml is different enough from other programming
languages that it should be *taught* differently.
I suppose it's arguable, though, that O'Caml might be more popular if
its teaching style catered more to peoples' expectations.
William
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 20:50 ` William Lovas
@ 2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 22:01 ` Brian Hurt
` (2 more replies)
2003-03-14 10:13 ` MikhailFedotov
1 sibling, 3 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-13 21:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 03:50:11PM -0500, William Lovas wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:52:32AM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> > I/O is on page 76, where imperative programming
> > is explained.
> >
> > When looking into K&R's C book, it's in the first chapter
> > on the first page to create a feedback from the machine
> > with the well-known "hello world"-example...
>
> Well, since C lacks a top-level read-eval-print loop, being able to
> do I/O is crucially important early on. Less so with O'Caml -- one
> can get right into the interesting bits of the programming language
> without having to know a wink of I/O. The necessary evils like I/O
> can wait 'til a little bit later... like Chapter 3 :)
Well, for unpatient people, this is a very long time!
(Even if you have not time to work every day with
that language and that book!)
>
> Plus, the top-level loop approach introduces a number of important
> concepts early on, like expressions, values, and types.
>
> > When you have a functional language and say: Yes, functional
> > programming is so genious, but get the I/O not before
> > the chapter about imperative programming, then it looks
> > not very honestly...
> >
> > But adding the FP-features as a "what other languages have not"
> > (or not so clear) later, this might (not proven it;-)) be
> > a beter approach in making the language interesting.
>
> You're basic objection here is that O'Caml is not being taught in the
> same way that other programming languages have been taught in the past.
> Should it be? Maybe O'Caml is different enough from other programming
> languages that it should be *taught* differently.
Yes, I have thought about that too.
Maybe programmers are - when looking at OCaml's
imperative features - not very impressed (namespace
of variables (records,..)).
Well, but on the other side, people are often very unpatient.
If the question is, to spread OCaml more, then people want
to have results fast.
E.G. scripting... some I/O-stuff right from the beginning,
and you can do some things, where you have used Perl before...
So, waiting with this until Chapter 3 may cause people
to stop learning the new language...
>
> I suppose it's arguable, though, that O'Caml might be more popular if
> its teaching style catered more to peoples' expectations.
Yes. Shure.
But if people have to wait too long - who has the time
today to invest so much time, if not a researcher or
unemployed (or workoholic, who comes home with rectangular
eyes and again take seat in front of the computer?)
Ciao,
Oliver
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-13 22:01 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-13 22:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-14 6:33 ` Michal Moskal
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Brian Hurt @ 2003-03-13 22:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Oliver Bandel; +Cc: caml-list
On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> But if people have to wait too long - who has the time today to invest
> so much time, if not a researcher or unemployed (or workoholic, who
> comes home with rectangular eyes and again take seat in front of the
> computer?)
Um, those of us who actually *care* about our craft, and realize that if
we just learn what our job needs us to know *right now* enough to have us
take time off to be taught it, we'll become dinosaurs? And/or
unemployeed, when we're replaced by someone who *did* go out and learn the
hot new technology?
I'm assuming you meant this humorously- but it's a serious question I've
been asked myself.
Brian
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 22:01 ` Brian Hurt
@ 2003-03-13 22:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-14 6:33 ` Michal Moskal
2 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-13 22:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
Hi,
well, my english... :(
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:17:02PM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> Well, for unpatient people, this is a very long time!
> (Even if you have not time to work every day with
^^^^\
especially
> that language and that book!)
Ciao,
Oliver ( at this time exploring the Stack-module... :) )
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 22:01 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-13 22:17 ` Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-14 6:33 ` Michal Moskal
2003-03-14 11:50 ` Markus Mottl
2 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Michal Moskal @ 2003-03-14 6:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Oliver Bandel; +Cc: caml-list
On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 10:17:02PM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote:
> E.G. scripting... some I/O-stuff right from the beginning,
> and you can do some things, where you have used Perl before...
I don't believe replacing perl scripts with ocaml ones is The Right
Thing to do... Just because in simple cases perl or sh is going to be
twice as short. OCaml mainly favors programming in large.
I know OCaml quite well, but still do scripting in perl or sh. Example:
extended lambda calculi interpreter written in OCaml + test suite
written in perl.
--
: Michal Moskal ::::: malekith/at/pld-linux.org : GCS {C,UL}++++$ a? !tv
: PLD Linux ::::::: Wroclaw University, CS Dept : {E-,w}-- {b++,e}>+++ h
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-14 6:33 ` Michal Moskal
@ 2003-03-14 11:50 ` Markus Mottl
2003-03-14 15:38 ` Oliver Bandel
0 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Markus Mottl @ 2003-03-14 11:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Michal Moskal; +Cc: Oliver Bandel, caml-list
On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Michal Moskal wrote:
> I don't believe replacing perl scripts with ocaml ones is The Right
> Thing to do... Just because in simple cases perl or sh is going to be
> twice as short. OCaml mainly favors programming in large.
"Short" <> "written quickly". OCaml is certainly more verbose than
Perl or sh for scripting tasks, but this hardly adds to the development
time. Writing down a function call instead of some funny Perl-operator
only requires a second more, but makes parsing scripts much simpler
for humans.
Actually, though I have learnt it, I never use Perl: when I need to write
some really trivial script that just executes a couple of commands, I use
bash. If it's a bit less trivial, OCaml is already the better choice IMHO.
Regards,
Markus Mottl
--
Markus Mottl markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-14 11:50 ` Markus Mottl
@ 2003-03-14 15:38 ` Oliver Bandel
0 siblings, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Oliver Bandel @ 2003-03-14 15:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: caml-list
On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 12:50:13PM +0100, Markus Mottl wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Michal Moskal wrote:
> > I don't believe replacing perl scripts with ocaml ones is The Right
> > Thing to do... Just because in simple cases perl or sh is going to be
> > twice as short. OCaml mainly favors programming in large.
>
> "Short" <> "written quickly".
Yes, I agree here fully.
If you had asked me this last week, I would have
a different opinion.
But I now have seen this very impressive.
> OCaml is certainly more verbose than
> Perl or sh for scripting tasks, but this hardly adds to the development
> time.
But on the first view this is not to see!
I often thought, that verbosity is annoying,
and perls "short constructs" are useful
to achieve faster development.
I recently saw that this is not the case.
But I'm shure, that it is a very common
assumption....
> Writing down a function call instead of some funny Perl-operator
> only requires a second more, but makes parsing scripts much simpler
> for humans.
[...]
ACK.
Ciao,
Oliver
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* RE: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-13 20:50 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
@ 2003-03-14 10:13 ` MikhailFedotov
2003-03-14 10:30 ` Johann Spies
1 sibling, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: MikhailFedotov @ 2003-03-14 10:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: 'William Lovas', 'Oliver Bandel'; +Cc: caml-list
Hi!
> You're basic objection here is that O'Caml is not being
> taught in the same way that other programming languages have
> been taught in the past. Should it be? Maybe O'Caml is
> different enough from other programming languages that it
> should be *taught* differently.
Key word is motivation. First visible results should be instant
and appealing in order to keep motivation. Simple programs
like "Hello world" are very important to keep motivation high.
All those samples ready to cut&paste.
As for the good practice, it's about simple tasks among the
more complex ones. The good example is "Concrete
Mathematics" by D.Knuth with its exercises, from trivial
to almost impossible - there is no single boring line.
If you forget about motivation to start (simple exersises), then it
doesn't really matter how sophiscated the language is by itself.
If you forget about motivation to progress (medum-difficulty
exersises, real tasks), then the reader will become bored.
If you forget about training how to use the language properly
for regular tasks (even just truncating the file after specified
position), then the reader will get the feeling of beautiful
academical language with no practical use. This is also
the case if all tasks were trivial and dedicated to learning
language constructs.
He will also become bored if someone will try to teach him
the theory behind the languge when all he wants is to learn
to use the language, preferrably by intuition (it is faster) using
examples.
As a summary:
1. Introduction.
2. Examples.
3. Reference manual with examples somewhere (not just grammar).
This is pretty enough... at least it works for me. :)
Mikhail
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
@ 2003-03-13 8:09 ` Pierre Weis
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Pierre Weis @ 2003-03-13 8:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Graham Guttocks; +Cc: pierre.weis, caml-list
> Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:
> >
> > This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no
> > ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use
> > a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
>
> Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
> just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an
> ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
> (in English) is pretty poor IMO.
I tried a lot to figure out what such a book could be; unfortunately I
still don't know.
> > learning Caml is indeed profitable to the way you deal with
> > programming problems, but on the other hand, yes, it is not so easy
>
> In http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/general-eng.html you said:
>
> ``Caml is a programming language, easy to learn, easy to use''.
>
> So is it easy or not easy?
>
> Graham
>
> http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
> - Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.
Oups! Well spotted :)
Hence, I should be a bit more precise: my feeling is that Caml is easy
to learn (and indeed in some sense, I think it is a true pleasure to
learn Caml). But, as I tried to say in the preceeding message, it is
also mandatory to learn it. In other terms, grasping Caml needs some
efforts from you. It is not difficult or painful but you must do this
effort. So, on the one hand, it is not difficult which means «it's
easy». On the other hand, you have to think and learn some new
concepts; a lot of people consider this kind of activity as hard and
tedious, in a word «difficult»; so that, for them, «it's not so easy».
I hope this is clearer. In some sense the book we should write is not
«Caml for dummies» but something like «Caml for the curious» or «Caml
for the voluntary learners».
Thank you for your interesting feed-back.
Best regards,
Pierre Weis
INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
@ 2003-03-15 1:43 ` Tushar Samant
2003-03-15 8:19 ` Andreas Eder
2 siblings, 1 reply; 57+ messages in thread
From: Tushar Samant @ 2003-03-15 1:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Pierre Weis; +Cc: caml-list
02003-03-11 | Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> writes:
> have to learn it. This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml:
> there is no ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to
Well said. I have had haphazard formal training in programming,
and until I arrived at the idea of informally reasoning out type
inference I essentially could not go beyond print_string(). This
is a type of thing which can go in "Ocaml for Dummies". As another
example, take type constructors. Here is their first occurrence in
the proposed O'Reilly book:
In contrast with tuples or records, which correspond to a Cartesian
product, the declaration of a sum type corresponds to a union of sets.
Different types (for example integers or character strings) are gathered
into a single type. The various members of the sum are distinguished by
-constructors-, which support on the one hand, as their name indicates,
construction of values of this type and on the other hand, thanks to
pattern matching, access to the components of these values. To apply
a constructor to an argument is to indicate that the value returned
belongs to this new type.
A programmer who is constantly asked to parse xml, make database
queries etc at work is not going to be sympathetic to this. And
no considerations of why other ways of doing it lead to a stronger
or weaker system are going to sway him. But a Dummies book, hand-
waving a constructor away as a flag or label, might. The third and
last example is the introduction of structures in the reference manual:
A primary motivation for modules is to package together related
definitions (such as the definitions of a data type and associated
operations over that type) and enforce a consistent naming scheme
for these definitions. This avoids running out of names or acci-
dentally confusing names. Such a package is called a -structure-
and is introduced by the struct...end construct, which contains
an arbitrary sequence of definitions. The structure is usually
given a name with the module binding.
Since C programmers mean something else by structure, it would be
nice if there was a Dummies book which said that a structure is a
namespace which may contain types, values and exceptions. Perhaps
it's not--who cares, that's merely the truth about it. A Dummies
book abandons the responsibility of being truthful all the time,
and hence manages to communicate with harried, seat of the pants
programmers. You know that it's just this type--myself included--
which stands the most to benefit from a safe fast language.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
@ 2003-03-11 16:26 ` Fred Yankowski
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Fred Yankowski @ 2003-03-11 16:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
Cc: caml-list
Richard Gabriel, author of the famous "Worse is Better" paper about
C/Unix vs Lisp, makes some interesting points in his recent book while
discussing his theory of what it takes for a programming language to
be accepted and evolve:
The second mandatory feature is that the language cannot require
mathematical sophistication from its users. Programmers are not
mathematicians, no matter how much we wish and wish for it. And I
don't mean sophisticated mathematicians, but just people who can
think precisely and rigorously in the way that mathematicians can.
For example, to most language theorists the purpose of types is to
enable the compiler to reason about the correctness of a program
in at least skeletal terms. Such reasoning can produce programs
with no run-time type errors. Strict type systems along with other
exemplary behavior, moreover, enable certain proofs about
programs.
Well, the average programmer might be grateful somewhere in his
heart for the lack of run-time type errors, but all he or she
really cares about is that the compiler can produce good code, and
types help compiler writers write compilers that do that.
Furthermore, types that try to do more than that are a hindrance
to understanding. For example, abstract data types allow one to
write programs in which the interface is completely separate from
the implementation. Perhaps some large programming teams care a
lot about that, but a lot of programming goes on in ones and twos,
maybe threes. Types of this variety, with complicated syntax and
baffling semantics, is a hindrance to programming for many of
these folks. Sure, someday this will be important as the size of
programming teams increases and as the level of mathematics
education increases (no laughing, please), but today it is not.
Inheritance and polymorphism are examples of programming language
concepts requiring mathematical sophistication to understand.
[From "Patterns of Software", 1996, Richard P. Gabriel, chapter titled
"The End of History and the Last Programming Language"]
--
Fred Yankowski fred@ontosys.com tel: +1.630.879.1312
OntoSys, Inc PGP keyID: 7B449345 fax: +1.630.879.1370
www.ontosys.com 38W242 Deerpath Rd, Batavia, IL 60510-9461, USA
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
@ 2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 20:24 ` Xavier Leroy
2003-03-13 0:42 ` Graham Guttocks
3 siblings, 2 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Martin Weber @ 2003-03-12 18:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Graham Guttocks; +Cc: caml-list
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:27:31PM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I discovered OCaml on Doug Bagley's computer shootout page where he
> gives it a rave review over all the other languages he evaluated.
> (...)
Yes, that's where I stumbled over Ocaml for the first time, too ...
> After looking into it further, I'm just surprised that OCaml isn't
> more popular.
I'm not. Exaggerating:
Most programmers are idiots, and idiots won't be able to appreciate
the good things - they take the language which fits their intellectual
base. Still wondering why tons of people program in perl ? :)
> (...)
> Any ideas why OCaml isn't more well known? Is it just because the
> language is not as old as something like Python, or perhaps because
> the syntax is more difficult to learn?
Bluntly, why should Ocaml be known more ? I'm programming in about a
dozen languages, and I don't give a **** about whether the language
is known or not. If it needs a run-time environment and I gotta deliver,
fine, then they gotta install the run-time environment too. As long as
it's not java you're delivering, they can even download it via the 'net
and still live to see it finishing :)
>From all the things I judge a language, its popularity is nothing
I'm looking at. Well, okay, it can serve to amuse me. The popularity
of lisp for example ("lisp is dead" (yeah - as dead as I am)), or that
of perl (@{%$}!!) ...
On the syntax bit, I think it's just sad that ocaml requires different
special operators for different arguments, that's about it which might
drive off new people. (why +. ? Can't 'a + 'a be enough for integer,
bignum, rational, float, string, whatsoEVER addition ? sigh ...).
regards,
-martin
PS: I'm using perl and java myself, so just making sure that you get
that this is no flamebait. If you can't help yourself, cat > /dev/null.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 57+ messages in thread
* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
@ 2003-03-12 20:24 ` Xavier Leroy
2003-03-13 0:42 ` Graham Guttocks
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Xavier Leroy @ 2003-03-12 20:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Martin Weber; +Cc: caml-list
> Exaggerating:
>
> Most programmers are idiots, and idiots won't be able to appreciate
> the good things - they take the language which fits their intellectual
> base. Still wondering why tons of people program in perl ? :)
On a loosely related note, see the article at
http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/05/cov_12feature.html
titled "The dumbing-down of programming", and subtitled "Rebelling
against Microsoft, 'My Computer' and easy-to-use wizards, an engineer
rediscovers the joys of difficult computing." The beginning is a bit
of a rant, but still "rediscovering the joys of difficult computing"
isn't a bad line for Caml :-)
- Xavier Leroy
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* Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity
2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 20:24 ` Xavier Leroy
@ 2003-03-13 0:42 ` Graham Guttocks
1 sibling, 0 replies; 57+ messages in thread
From: Graham Guttocks @ 2003-03-13 0:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Martin Weber; +Cc: caml-list
Martin Weber <Ephaeton@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Most programmers are idiots, and idiots won't be able to appreciate
> the good things - they take the language which fits their
> intellectual base.
This may be a bit harsh, but I understand your sentiment. How about
the group in between the idiots and the language specialists? i.e,
folks who _would_ appreciate OCaml if they were exposed to it and had
some better teaching tools available?
> Bluntly, why should Ocaml be known more ?
Notoriety leads to a greater userbase which has many trickle-down
effects such as external suggestions and contributions, conferences,
additional funding, etc. all of which improve the language and insure
its future. The benefits of opensource are all about getting the code
into more hands. You lose all of these if OCaml remains obscure and
shrouded in mystery.
Look, I'm not talking about turning OCaml into a commercially driven
behemoth like Java folks. I'd just like to see OCaml get the exposure,
support, credit, etc. I think it deserves.
=====
Regards,
Graham
http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
- Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.
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2003-03-14 22:14 [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Daniel M. Albro
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2003-03-15 16:27 Oliver Bandel
2003-03-15 17:55 ` Sergey Goldgaber
2003-03-13 14:39 [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity] Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 16:35 ` [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Michael Schuerig
2003-03-13 7:09 Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 16:48 ` Neel Krishnaswami
2003-03-13 21:29 ` Karl Zilles
2003-03-13 21:36 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 21:42 ` Daniel M. Albro
[not found] ` <15985.1204.814698.939943@h00045a4799d6.ne.client2.attbi.com>
2003-03-14 5:49 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-14 9:05 ` Ville-Pertti Keinonen
2003-03-14 9:13 ` Daniel M. Albro
2003-03-13 21:53 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-12 23:53 [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity] Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 1:34 ` [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 17:40 isaac gouy
2003-03-06 23:27 Graham Guttocks
2003-03-10 20:43 ` Paul Steckler
2003-03-10 23:48 ` Gerd Stolpmann
2003-03-11 0:18 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-17 23:49 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-11 1:43 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-11 10:23 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-11 14:27 ` Guillaume Marceau
2003-03-11 16:16 ` David Brown
2003-03-12 2:32 ` Nicolas Cannasse
2003-03-12 10:51 ` Alex Romadinoff
2003-03-12 18:24 ` Max Kirillov
2003-03-11 19:02 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-12 17:12 ` Richard W.M. Jones
2003-03-12 18:08 ` Alwyn Goodloe
2003-03-12 22:34 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:13 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-13 8:02 ` Alessandro Baretta
2003-03-13 10:23 ` Michael Schuerig
2003-03-12 23:35 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-12 23:18 ` Daniel Bünzli
2003-03-12 23:47 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-13 2:15 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 3:44 ` Graham Guttocks
2003-03-13 9:31 ` Richard W.M. Jones
[not found] ` <20030313095232.GC347@first.in-berlin.de>
2003-03-13 20:50 ` William Lovas
2003-03-13 21:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-13 22:01 ` Brian Hurt
2003-03-13 22:17 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-14 6:33 ` Michal Moskal
2003-03-14 11:50 ` Markus Mottl
2003-03-14 15:38 ` Oliver Bandel
2003-03-14 10:13 ` MikhailFedotov
2003-03-14 10:30 ` Johann Spies
2003-03-13 8:09 ` Pierre Weis
2003-03-15 1:43 ` Tushar Samant
2003-03-15 8:19 ` Andreas Eder
2003-03-11 16:26 ` Fred Yankowski
2003-03-12 18:59 ` Martin Weber
2003-03-12 20:24 ` Xavier Leroy
2003-03-13 0:42 ` Graham Guttocks
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