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 XAA15585; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:20:29 +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 XAA14905 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:20:28 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from outbound28-2.lax.untd.com (outbound28-2.lax.untd.com [64.136.28.160]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id i7CLKQRM019586 for ; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:20:26 +0200 Received: from outbound28-2.lax.untd.com (smtp03.lax.untd.com [10.130.24.123]) by smtpout05.lax.untd.com with SMTP id AABATZZ2ZA3ETKVS for (sender ); Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:20:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 22926 invoked from network); 12 Aug 2004 21:19:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO vangogh) (66.52.236.34) by smtp03.lax.untd.com with SMTP; 12 Aug 2004 21:19:43 -0000 From: "Brandon J. Van Every" To: "caml" Subject: RE: [Caml-list] OCaml growing pains Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:30:24 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <411B8585.7000507@kittown.com> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Importance: Normal X-ContentStamp: 14:7:4247439139 X-UNTD-OriginStamp: CI84cOLHFqh7Zd2QWkwvEFvwyO3T/pIsFsCrOjjLH87wmijZHtuHPkkA0FncqQNJ X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 411BDF1A.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; brandon:99 caml-list:01 langauge:01 fork:01 python:01 python:01 benign:01 preferrable:01 mentality:01 interfering:01 biz:99 caml-list:01 ocaml's:01 bayesian:01 crap:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Mikhail Fedotov wrote: > > Good points below, but it seems you are loosing a major one: > you *never* can promote/advance > the langauge while going *against* its authors. (You can fork if of > course, but then you'll be on your own.) I doubt the historical evidence supports your claim. For instance, I seem to recall people who have disagreed with Guido Van Rossum about the direction Python should take, who just went off and did stuff, and whose work is now considered important to the Python community. I don't recall how adversarial those relationships were. It is also certainly possible to support a language in the absence of its canonical technical list. One just has to create a list that's more user friendly and that has sufficient brains for the problems. Languages with big audiences certainly aren't restricted by 1 canonical technical list, for instance. C, C++, Java, and C# are all quite beyond their authors. > That's one bad side, but there is another one which is even > worse. While spending all time on > sorting out offences and stuff, you are not only loosing any > chance to do anything good, but you > even do not know if you are actually able to help (read: > develop trivial ideas like "community > should grow" into something implementable and implement them > *without* going against tool > authors and maintainers, choose proper style and attitude for > messages in *tech* list etc). I already learned from the Python Software Foundation crowd not to rely upon the authority figures for anything. Authority figures *could* provide organizational resources, but they may choose not to do so, for benign or malicious reasons. In that event, one simply has to do it oneself. That's acutally preferrable if an authority figure isn't any good at addressing a particular problem. Open source is primarily about having a route around obstructions. I wouldn't be interested in OCaml if there weren't solutions to the worst case scenarios. > In addition, when all feedback from major players that you > are receiving is negative, it means > that you are going in the wrong direction and for some reason fail to > change it into the right one. I don't think so. I think it shows where the major players are at in their thinking and tastes. OCaml is not this popular language, so why should we assume its major players know best about how to grow it? I've encountered tons of crabby Python developers who don't want to hear about business or language growth. In fact, many of them explicitly say they want the language to stay small so that they won't have to deal with... idiots, or whatever other horrible thing they think would happen if something pierced their personal techno-bubble. It's a pattern of introversion among techies. I don't easily fathom that mentality myself. I see money and jobs working on what people actually want to work on. Part of the problem may be that the most introverted have already solved this problem for themselves, and don't really want anything interfering with their pleasurable status quo. biz-focused mailing lists are indeed better for the growth discussions. I'm just not ready to start such a list yet. I was ready to start an OCaml Games mailing list, so I did so. I was ready to start ML S*attle, so I did so. If OCaml proves to be commercially viable for me, then I will start a biz list about it. > >This is called getting things done. Where's your index of local user > >groups? Where are the announces? There is nothing at > >http://caml.inria.fr at all. What transmission vehicle if not > >caml-list? > > The most obvious is http://www.ocaml.org - it does not seem to be > maintened anymore ( no mention > of 3.08 release), so *maybe* you have the chance to become the > maintainer if you ask the > right people. Then you'll be able to show that you can do. :) You put a smiley, so maybe you don't mean this so seriously. But I have to observe: I'm not here to spend buckets of man hours to gratuitously prove my credibility. I look for the simple solution and implement it. It's not rational to take on the burdens of acquiring and maintaining someone else's website when all I really want, right now, is a transmission vector for ML S*attle announces. If I thought caml-list couldn't serve that role, I'd start another mailing list. As it is, at least I do have comp.lang.ml and comp.lang.functional (without controversy). I'm certainly not ready to become OCaml's official webadmin. People around here don't even like me, so I hardly feel obligated to do some Herculean, unappreciated task to benefit them. Besides, if you look at my website you'll realize how weak my webadmin skills are. If I have success with OCaml in the arenas I most care about, I'll organize *other* people to take on such burdens. There is one community organizational question I can address immediately, however. So, I will do that in a new thread, leaving behind this more incendiary conversation. I don't personally have a problem with incendiary conversations, as sometimes the pointed needs to be voiced. But, they do lead people to flames, as people often don't take the pointed very well. Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brand*n Van Every S*attle, WA Praise Be to the caml-list Bayesian filter! It blesseth my postings, it is evil crap! evil crap! Bigarray! Unboxed overhead group! Wondering! chant chant chant... // return an array of 100 packed tuples temps int $[tvar0][2*100]; // what the c function needs value $[tvar1]; // one int value $[tvar2]; // one tuple int $[tvar3] // loop control var oncePre eachPre $[cvar0]=&($[tvar0][0]); eachPost $[lvar0] = alloc(2*100, 0 /*NB: zero-tagged block*/ ); for(int $[tvar3]=0;$[tvar3]<100;$[tvar3]++) { $[tvar2] = alloc_tuple(2); $[tvar1] = Val_int($[cvar0][0+2*$[tvar3]]); Store_field($[tvar2],0,$[tvar1]); $[tvar1] = Val_int($[cvar0][1]); Store_field($[tvar2],1,$[tvar1+2*$[tvar3]]); Array_store($[lvar0],$[tvar3],$[tvar0]); } oncePost ------------------- 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