From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6CDABC6B for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2007 19:12:42 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAIK0KUdQRFuw/2dsb2JhbACQNQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.21,359,1188770400"; d="scan'208";a="18841781" Received: from discorde.inria.fr ([192.93.2.38]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 01 Nov 2007 19:12:42 +0100 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by discorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id lA1ICfis016387 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=OK) for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2007 19:12:42 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao8CAIK0KUdQRFuw/2dsb2JhbACQNQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.21,359,1188770400"; d="scan'208";a="18841780" Received: from furbychan.cocan.org ([80.68.91.176]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 01 Nov 2007 19:12:41 +0100 Received: from rich by furbychan.cocan.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1IneX2-0007cZ-00 for ; Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:12:40 +0000 Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 18:12:40 +0000 To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Google trends Message-ID: <20071101181240.GB28124@furbychan.cocan.org> References: <200711010102.39348.jon@ffconsultancy.com> <20071101094629.GA28190@furbychan.cocan.org> <200711011631.35443.jon@ffconsultancy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200711011631.35443.jon@ffconsultancy.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) From: Richard Jones X-Miltered: at discorde with ID 472A1719.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 stdlib:01 recursive:01 bindings:01 bigarrays:01 subset:01 ocamlnet:01 camlidl:01 ocaml:01 redistribute:01 46,:98 cheer:98 shim:98 embrace:98 wrote:01 On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 04:31:35PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote: > On Thursday 01 November 2007 09:46, Richard Jones wrote: > > This is hardly a cause to cheer. The two languages aren't compatible > > in any way which is relevant to the real world... > > The compatibility has made it easy for us to port our software in OCaml on > Linux to F# on Windows. That is (literally) valuable to us. > > > and the libraries are completely different. > > Much of the F# stdlib is both compatible and improved (e.g. tail recursive) > and extended (e.g. Array.map2). Some other aspects such as web services and > complex numbers are better in F#. For many other things, such as FFTW, I > write my own shim anyway and there are then no compatibility issues. Writing > bindings is easier with F# and there are no silly Bigarrays (woohoo!) or > anything. So if I confine myself to a subset of the language and library, and hope that all the third-party libraries I might use also confine themselves, then I can compile on F#. And what do I gain in this situation? Not the advantage of using the .Net libraries, nor any great amount of speed. The other things you mention are in extlib, ocamlnet & camlidl respectively. Sorry, not seeing the advantage yet. Sounds to me more like embrace and extend. > > Microsoft could have contributed valuable changes back to OCaml, > > As Skaller has said, we cannot contribute to the OCaml code > base. Even if you fork the codebase you are still bound by its > license and you are not allowed to redistribute your own modified > OCaml distribution. Nonsense. You have to distribute as original code + patches, but there are automated tools that make this simple (eg. RPM and debs both support precisely this mode of source distribution and make it completely transparent to the developer, or if you prefer to stick to source code in directories you can use tools like 'quilt' or any of the advanced distributed version control systems). > Overall, anyone interested in earning a living from programming in > OCaml should definitely consider F#. We are already earning a > significant amount of money from it and I only see that improving... Jon, very happy about that. I hope that Microsoft continue to support and improve F#. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat