Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 04:08:10PM -0700, Vasili Galchin wrote:
> I (Vasili) mean wide use of OCaml in the industry. An
> example of a FPL that has little chance is Haskell. I
> saw one poster on haskell group call it a science
> project. I agree. The Haskell is nibbling around the
> edges but not providing industrial-strength libraries,
> etc. Fortunately OCAML seems to have a big base and a
> lot of people working on various projects. HOWEVER,
> core functionality like IPV6 socket library code is
> not checked in! Why?

These are good points.  One thing that must *constantly* be considered
by someone looking at a language is the size, flexibility, and quality
of libraries available to help reduce the time to implement a project.
Haskell is absolutely terrible in this regard, so while I actually
prefer its more pervasive lazy evaluation (or even that of a logic
language like Prolog), the fact that I would have to be doing a
tremendous amount of wheel reinventing quickly soured me on Haskell.

OCaml is better, good enough to be a player, but not good enough to be a
good tool.  Here are some examples:

 * OCaml has no library for IMAP.

 * OCamlDBI supports only two database servers.  OcamlODBC supports many
   more through the system's ODBC support, but loads the entire result
   set into memory before handing it over to the user, which makes it
   unusable for many serious projects.

 * Your socket-related point is completely accurate and on-target.

 * String processing and list processing -- especially slicing -- remain
   weaknesses.

 * Time calculations and formatting are also largely missing.

-- John

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