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 WAA13017; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 22:22:37 +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 WAA12698 for ; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 22:22:37 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from relay.pair.com (relay1.pair.com [209.68.1.20]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id g9HKMa521142 for ; Thu, 17 Oct 2002 22:22:36 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (qmail 10257 invoked from network); 17 Oct 2002 20:22:34 -0000 Received: from node-d8e9cca2-sfo-onnet.worldcom.com (HELO checkerlap.d6.com) (216.233.204.162) by relay1.pair.com with SMTP; 17 Oct 2002 20:22:34 -0000 X-pair-Authenticated: 216.233.204.162 Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20021017130323.02dbb068@mail.d6.com> X-Sender: checker@mail.d6.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 13:22:22 -0700 To: Ocaml Mailing List From: Chris Hecker Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Camlp4 optimizations (was: productivity improvement) In-Reply-To: References: <4.3.2.7.2.20021017112600.0318b410@mail.d6.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk >how important is operator overloading? I'm amazed that people who are interested in high level languages are asking these questions (not to attack you personally, just the overall attitude)! I replied to most of this issue in my previous post, but come on people, the job of a language is to make the programmer's life easier. Software quality is horrible, for the most part, and we don't even get this horrible software on time. Why? Hint: it's not because correct programs are running too slow and developers are spending that time optimizing. It's because complex software is hard to write correctly. The language should help with this. Ocaml helps in a lot of ways with this problem, but when writing numerical code it doesn't help very much, or as much as it could. That is what I'm complaining about. If I could write matlab-style syntax in ocaml, hundreds of lines of code in my game would just disappear. That would be wonderful! It would mean it was easier and faster to write, to debug, and that when I realize I didn't actually want to do a certain operation, I could change it quickly. When I finally figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it, I'll optimize it. And besides, the entire idea behind a garbage collector is that it's fast at handling tons of small allocations! I use tons of matrix -> matrix -> matrix operations (like add, mult, etc. in and attempt to make more readable code) and the performance is perfectly acceptable for development. I will optimize things later, but LATER, and only if I need to. Frustrated, Chris ------------------- 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