Re: [Caml-list] Camlp4/OCaml [was: Generating C stubs]

[Markus Mottl <markus@oefai.at>]

On Thu, 16 May 2002, Daniel de Rauglaudre wrote:
> On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 03:39:45PM -0400, John Prevost wrote:
> > Really?  Why did someone decide that inclusion was a bad idea?
> I say it. Camlp4 and the attempts to improve the syntax have been
> considered *officially* by the OCaml team as a "not serious" work
> and a "loss of time". As I worried about that, and asked for more
> information, it has been confirmed by the team, moreover with several
> personnal attacks.

Sigh. I also don't want to mess with social issues at INRIA, but find
it strange indeed that this is the official line. The only reason
so far why I didn't use camlp4 too often in the past was _because_ it
obviously didn't get enough official support. Its addition to the standard
distribution seemed like a good idea to me. I consider it a very useful
tool for a language that is still a somewhat moving target and which may
require syntax changes in the future. Those could be done with much less
hassle given a powerful tool. Not to mention extensions needed by users.

The syntax question has already been raised here several times so I
don't want to do it again. Suffice it to say that OCaml _has_ syntactic
problems about which beginners stumble frequently as I still remember
from my beginner time and as I can observe with people whom I have just
recently converted. One can get accustomed to and work around those
issues, but this doesn't really make them go away.

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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