Re: [Caml-list] productivity improvement

[Alessandro Baretta <alex@baretta.com>]

Oleg wrote:

> P.S. Having read the CalTech tutorial and chapters 1-4 & 14 of the O'Reilly 
> book, and having gotten some experience with O'Caml, I'm running low on 
> motivation right now. Please give me examples of what's 
> hard/awkward/impossible in C++, but relatively easy in O'Caml, if any (I have 
> only finite time, so 50 KLOC Coq is not a good example :)

I am in the process of finishing up a simple XML stylesheet 
processor which formats ascii data for a line printer. Very 
simple. About 1000 odd lines of code in O'Caml. Would a 
project of this kind and size suit your interest? You might 
try to code a processor for the same dtd, so that we can 
measure di difference in "semantic density" of O'Caml and 
C++, within the limits of our respective abilities with the 
two languages (I'm not an O'Caml guru--yet...)

> P.P.S. My primary interest is statistical AI (artificial neural networks). I 
> haven't found any relevant libraries or applications in SML or O'Caml. That 
> is a bit discouraging.

I have a feeling that O'Caml was born out INRIA's need for a 
language to use in symbolic AI projects. The two worlds seem 
to be very difficult to reconcile.

> [1] And the example was hand-picked!
> [2] If one doesn't want "ad hoc" genericity, templates aren't necessary, of 
> course.

Ah! Wait a minute. I have another toy project I could 
propose to you: an interpreter for rule based language, à la 
CLIPS. 197 lines of code in ocaml, including comments. This 
is probably the kind of compelling example you are looking 
for. I coded it in 24 h, including time for sleep, nutrition 
and general self care.

Let me know if you are interested.

Alex

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