From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id p2VCoZX9012394 for ; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:50:35 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AmsCAGZ3lE3U4xEKkWdsb2JhbACERpNVjTEUAQEBAQkLCwcUAyKIeaUokFcCgSaDTHcEiDuIKw X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.63,275,1299452400"; d="scan'208";a="91605041" Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.10]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 31 Mar 2011 14:50:29 +0200 Received: from office1.lan.sumadev.de (dslb-094-219-211-188.pools.arcor-ip.net [94.219.211.188]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mreu3) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0M2TKr-1PmvdB2MMf-00sL9o; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:50:28 +0200 Received: from [192.168.5.106] (dslb-094-219-211-188.pools.arcor-ip.net [94.219.211.188]) by office1.lan.sumadev.de (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 74C9D5F702; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:50:25 +0200 (CEST) From: Gerd Stolpmann To: Christophe Papazian Cc: caml-list In-Reply-To: <25BB4625-7DB0-47E2-A378-5F121EB41EB8@gmail.com> References: <4D9328A0.3020504@wp.pl> <25BB4625-7DB0-47E2-A378-5F121EB41EB8@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:50:19 +0200 Message-ID: <1301575819.8429.835.camel@thinkpad> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.28.1 X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:OJJbU4Kh3X6SiC0uz45PxPWDMn1Oow4WSAnvwrzN+zr ncRWco5mgY4xCCT2oYhv/LCqLvT1nY59mycrOR/nRJ99cM8gpW cBZ6IdI+UeWsqm+vhJEDPFVHMWTXn1UZVP+5jsU3vFkveOzuKR uou7YQK5lNyIoPsTlwoMGfZLZwMSEQc91ucFxYltQ50JFfIULA Pha7vbwrvUPc5FJfZxz+w== Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by walapai.inria.fr id p2VCoZX9012394 Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Arithmetic operations Am Donnerstag, den 31.03.2011, 09:56 +0200 schrieb Christophe Papazian: > Selling cars without tires ! > > This is a huge problem of the ocaml community. Who wants a minimal > library ? > What makes other languages popular ? There are huge API. > For Ocaml, the main web site is just for the compiler, the ocaml hump > is refreshed > each month with few new things. So I need to use as well godi (another > web site), > batteries (still in progress, another web site), janestreet (another > solution, another > web site). Everybody is making is own api, which is not very > interesting for the end user. > > When I use python or latex, eveything is centralized, I pick the > packages I need, and all is done. > Ocaml situation would be understandable if this was something new, but > after 15 years, it's just > the french way : "We have good ideas, but we don't care how to sell > them". > And this must be a reason why ocaml community is still small. The problem is not the packaging of the software. Actually, we are doing quite well, given that multiple organizations and individuals feel responsible. What is really French thinking is that centralism is good, btw. The current situation is at least supporting some competition between solutions. Whether there is one or several APIs is irrelevant as long as they can be used together. In some sense, this is the "Linux" way of doing it - only the core of the system is centralized, and for everything else there is a free market. We are not living in a time where it is easy to make a language popular. If you are a company, you have to spend 100 of millions to make this happen (see what Sun and Microsoft had to spend for their platforms). And most of that goes into marketing, i.e. paying people for constantly praising the product. The main reason why the Ocaml community is small: Functional programming is not widely taught at Universities (worldwide). Because of this, it can still be ignored by the industry (remember the industry depends on the knowledge of the graduates - and it's the graduates who create the market for jobs, contrary to their own reception of the situation). Gerd > Christophe > > > > > > Le 30 mars 11 à 14:57, Dawid Toton a écrit : > > > > >> It would be so good if some missing operations on numbers could be > >> added to the standard set : (...) > >> The lack of those functions gives a feeling of immaturity of the > >> language. > >> Is it possible in some near futur release to add them ? > > This is a matter of libraries, not the language. The standard library > > coming with raw ocaml distribution is intended to be lightweight and > > minimal. It is a library like core[1] or batteries[2] that should > > provide the "standard set" of operations. You can consider filling a > > feature request ticket. > > > > Dawid > > > > [1] http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/13 > > [2] http://batteries.forge.ocamlcore.org/ > > > > -- > > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > > > > > -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Gerd Stolpmann, Bad Nauheimer Str.3, 64289 Darmstadt,Germany gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de Phone: +49-6151-153855 Fax: +49-6151-997714 ------------------------------------------------------------