From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id PAA06094; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 15:48:50 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA05400 for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 15:48:48 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from gatekeeper.elmer.external.excelhustler.com (gatekeeper.excelhustler.com [68.99.114.105]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i38DmlYM018243 for ; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 15:48:47 +0200 Received: from chatterbox.elmer.internal.excelhustler.com (unknown [192.168.0.12]) (using TLSv1 with cipher EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA (168/168 bits)) (Client CN "chatterbox.elmer.internal.excelhustler.com", Issuer "excelhustler.com" (not verified)) by gatekeeper.elmer.external.excelhustler.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6B74E0140; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:48:46 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chatterbox.elmer.internal.excelhustler.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B05A25C006; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:48:46 -0500 (CDT) Received: from wile.internal.excelhustler.com (wile.internal.excelhustler.com [192.168.1.34]) by chatterbox.elmer.internal.excelhustler.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8154A5C005; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:48:46 -0500 (CDT) Received: by wile.internal.excelhustler.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 271FD1B065; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:48:47 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 08:48:47 -0500 From: John Goerzen To: Vasili Galchin Cc: Benjamin Geer , skaller@users.sourceforge.net, Dustin Sallings , Kenneth Knowles , caml-list Subject: Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library) Message-ID: <20040408134847.GE29195@excelhustler.com> References: <4072E7C4.5090008@socialtools.net> <20040407230810.619.qmail@web41205.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040407230810.619.qmail@web41205.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i X-Scanned-By: clamscan at chatterbox.elmer.internal.excelhustler.com X-Miltered: at concorde by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml's:01 caml-list:01 run-time:01 2004:99 haskell:01 haskell:01 terrible:01 pervasive:01 prolog:01 reinventing:01 ocamlodbc:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 0700,:01 lazy:02 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 140 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 ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners