From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2FACEBB81 for ; Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:08:39 +0200 (CEST) Received: from rwcrmhc12.comcast.net (rwcrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.198.39]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j6O88cvs002117 for ; Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:08:38 +0200 Received: from [192.168.1.4] (c-24-10-253-157.hsd1.ut.comcast.net[24.10.253.157]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc13) with ESMTP id <2005072408083601500a017ge>; Sun, 24 Jul 2005 08:08:36 +0000 Message-ID: <42E34C83.1090402@cs.utah.edu> Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 02:08:35 -0600 From: Robert Morelli User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paul Snively Cc: Ville-Pertti Keinonen , Kyle Consalus , caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some Clarifications References: <9cc3782b05071411004b27b6a4@mail.gmail.com> <42DB6161.4030507@cs.utah.edu> <42DD5F41.8060801@cs.utah.edu> <42DDECC6.8010209@exomi.com> <42E2DB1E.2010508@cs.utah.edu> <81A4F491-183D-46C4-B8A8-5DD4799B45C4@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <81A4F491-183D-46C4-B8A8-5DD4799B45C4@mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 42E34C86.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; morelli:01 morelli:01 caml-list:01 advocates:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 conspiracy:98 attitude:98 2005,:98 conspiracy:98 giants:98 brass:98 wrote:01 wrote:01 ideally:01 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.3 (2005-04-27) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=5.0 tests=SPF_SOFTFAIL autolearn=disabled version=3.0.3 What you've quoted here is a direct and emphatic statement that what I wanted to discuss is something I believe is a technical issue, not a conspiracy of large corporations, not an attack on a poster's credibility, not a claim that some broadly useful language is horrendously bad, not rhetorical deceptions, not advocacy, not ad hominem diversions. You didn't include it in your quote, but I also pointed out that functional programmers are prone to a counterproductive form of advocacy and focus on low level issues and that they have generally been unsuccessful at providing practical documentation. I do lament that, and it is directly relevant to the original poster's question, but I primarily raised that point to underline that I believe the lack of a "theory" of large scale design issues is not a result of it. You may disagree with me, and you may find my statements provocative or unsettling, but you cannot claim that I attempted to use a game of rhetorical deception, advocacy, or ad hominem diversions. One point which might help clarify my attitude, is that my hostility is to advocacy on this mailing list, not to any particular language or paradigm. Advocates of OCaml might misinterpret my hostility to advocacy as a hostility to OCaml. That would be quite off the mark, but I do not see a good justification for further elaborating my personal attitudes here. Paul Snively wrote: > On Jul 23, 2005, at 5:04 PM, Robert Morelli wrote: > >> To be entirely frank, I am put off by the style of your comments. > > > Considering that you're the one who joined the thread by saying: > > "This seems as good a time as any to delurk and jump on a soap box" and > "The FP paradigm is intrinsically poorly adapted to the kind of large > scale design concepts that concern most programmers. Object oriented > programming is a much better match, not because of a conspiracy of > commercial giants in the software tool business, but because of > intrinsic technical reasons. Functional programming is a niche > technology ideally suited to simple domains like language tools and > formal methods. It does not have much to say about complicated > systems," I have to say that complaining about the style of others' > comments here takes considerably bigger brass balls than I possess. > Congratulations. > > Best regards, > Paul Snively