Re: [Caml-list] suggestion: do not link to www.ocaml.org

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

On Wed, Apr 14, 2004 at 11:16:02AM -0700, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> John Goerzen wrote:
> > > To you.  And I submit, you are a techie who thinks the word
> > > 'hacker' has
> > > positive connotations.  Suits don't see it that way.  Not that I'm a
> >
> > Sure, but -- who gives a damn?
> 
> Clearly not you.  Since you're not interested in entertaining the
> perspective of target demographics other than your own, I don't see a
> reason to belabor explaining anything to you.  You won't listen.

Nope, that's not what I'm saying.  What I am saying is that you are
poking at OCaml.org, complaining that it doesn't target suits.  Well, it
doesn't *try* to target suits; it's targeting techies, so I don't see
the problem.  I think it's fine to also target suits, but if a single
site tries to reach everyone, it will wind up doing a poor job for any
one particular interest.

> > The site is clearly aimed at programmers who will understand.
> 
> If one wants to grow a language base, why should it be so narrowly
> aimed?

I don't think there's a real problem with aiming at the people that will
actually use it.  Granted, hackers only make up part of the OCaml
community; they may in fact be a minority compared to the scientists and
mathematicians using OCaml.  But I would suspect those audiences also
can find something of value on ocaml.org.

The point about the news freshness is indeed quite important; nobody
wants to use a language that is dying.

> > > Sure.  A 2% market share can't be wrong.  ;-)  Beats OCaml by a mile
> > > though.
> >
> > You have no idea what the Python "market share" is,
> 
> One point of data:
> http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm
> There are others.  You can Google for them yourself.  If you actually
> want to know, it's knowable.  The ballpark is certainly correct: try
> going to Monster.com and searching for Python jobs.  ;-)  Now try OCaml.
> ;-) ;-)

Well, we're verging on being off-topic here, but yes, I know Python is
more popular than OCaml.  Neither the tiobe.com nor search engines
produces a very reliable number, though; a valid survey would likely be
required to do that.

-- John

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