Re: [Caml-list] UFO (United Forces of OCaml)

["Damien Guichard" <alphablock@orange.fr>]

Hello Gour,


OCaml is multi-paradigm in nature.
There are multiple ways (multiple trade-offs) a thing can be done.

Let's adopt the Open Source way:
- At first there is nothing (i remember the days when OCaml had zero MySQL
bindings)
- Then they are multiple things (the number of MySQL bindings is 3 or 4)
- Then some become unmaintained, some others gain attraction
- Then (in a few years) you end with 2 or 3 good / excellent ways to do it

Same about books, documentation, tutorials, IDEs ...
In contrast with Caml-Light, OCaml has no 'official' book, tutorial or IDE.
However i expect many to come, some to become almost forgotten,
some to be cited as a reference point (Ocaml evolves continually).  
Actually there is an 'official' OCaml 2.2 book, but somewhat obsolete now.

Just my humble opinion of course.

I understand that, as a beginner, you may consider diversity as a danger.
It seems your software is more fragile because some basic block could be
discontinued.
I would answer : the software fragility lies in the programmer,
not in the language ecosystem being too weak.  

Actually GTK 2.24 looks very great when a good theme is applied.
You can have this metal brush look. Or this white water-button look.
Or whatever look you can imagine (or design). 
Plus LablGtk is an excellent binding that makes GTK programming far much
easier.

Otherwise i would warmly welcome a Qt binding.
However, i dont wait for it, i go ahead.
Even if i switch to Qt some day i don't loose my time,
because knowing GTK, whatever language, is an asset anyway.   

I hope i am not too much rude with you,
I apologize if i am,

- Damien

 

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Le 27/09/2013 à 09:11, Gour <gour@atmarama.net> à écrit :
>Hello,
>
>I'm at the beginning of learning and using OCaml which is very fine
>language and I've decided to use it over Ada.
>
>Many new things are happening like development of OPAM (very nice
>project), then moving some projects to ocaml.org subdomains, new design
>of the site as well...
>
>However, there are certain things which seems like wasting of resources,
>so my humble proposal is whether it is possible to make UFO - United
>Forces of OCaml in order not to have too many (similar) projects
>tackling the same problems.
>
>One area which quickly comes to my mind is standard library. Although
>I'm not (yet) able to conclude how much is standard library incomplete,
>I see there are two larger projects trying to fill the gap.
>
>Jane Street is calling it "'Jane Street's alternative to the standard
>library", while 'batteries' are labelled as: "community-driven effort to
>standardize on an consistent, documented, and comprehensive development
>platform for the OCaml programming language."
>
>For the uninitiated it's seems as attempts to solve the same problem,
>but, unfortunately, it looks they're tackling it in a non-compatible
>way.
>
>It's especially sensitive considering that the RWO book -  which might
>be used for many noobs to learn the language - is promoting Core, while
>'community-driven' project is working on something else.
>
>Another thing which I can think of are build systems and although I'm
>aware there is certain overlap in functionality and/or interdependances,
>to me it seems that there are too many of them:
>
>a) OASIS
>
>b) ocamlbuild
>
>c) omake
>
>d) ocp-build
>
>e) yenga
>
>f) ...
>
>The list can be, of course, annotated by the need to have actively
>developed/maintained bindings for truly multio-platform GUI bindings
>(e.g. wx/Qt).
>
>So, my naive proposal is to try to combine forces together and produce
>small(er) set of tools libraries and make it somewhat 'standard' within
>community. It will attract new people to the language itself by making
>it (more) clear what are the standard tools to be used.
>
>The OCaml community is, imho, not big-enough to allow such luxury of
>re-inventing the wheels...
>
>Moreover, OCaml is advertised as "general purpose industrial-strength
>programming language" and it behooves to have mature fully baked
>ecosystem.
>
>
>Sincerely,
>Gour
>
>-- 
>The work of a man who is unattached to the modes of material 
>nature and who is fully situated in transcendental knowledge 
>merges entirely into transcendence.
>
>http://www.atmarama.net | Hlapicina (Croatia) | GPG: 52B5C810
>
>
>
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