Re: [Caml-list] OCaml for Industry

[Chris Campbell <cyberdanx@gmail.com>]

On 08/08/05, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> On Monday 08 August 2005 18:58, skaller wrote:
> > > Rather than writing a whole report (seeing as there's no interest in it),
> >
> > That is a silly conclusion IMHO. Did you really expect existing
> > Ocaml experts to buy a report on use of Ocaml in industry targetted
> > at MANAGERS??
> 
> My theory was that programmers who appreciate better languages might want some
> evidence that they can present to their managers in order to help justify the
> use of non-mainstream languages. I was curious to see if anyone here was in
> such a position.

No one is going to pay £800 to buy a report containing evidence Ocaml
works in industry.  You may make a damn good case, but it ain't gonna
happen.

If you don't have a few million to spend on advertising, some free
t-shirts and big signs with words like "disruptive", "lower tco", and
all that jazz you're coming through the back door with word of mouth. 
That means you write applications in it, applications which are used!

This is one thing people fail to understand.  Ordinary users won't
care if your software is written in OCaml, Brainf**k or Java.  The
application is primary to them.  Developers otoh will care about the
underlying language.  To get their attention though you need to do
more than write some code.  You need to write code that gets used. 
That's the hard bit though.  What will people use?

> I get the impression that most people here (like me) write OCaml code without
> benefit of a manager. ;-)

Yep. :)