[Caml-list] Re: Native OCaml iPhone app now in iTunes Store

[Jeffrey Scofield <jeffsco@psellos.com>]

Joel Reymont <joelr1@gmail.com> writes:

> Are you bundling OCaml code as a library and putting a GUI layer of
> ObjC on top?

All the code is in OCaml; there's no ObjC except in the (thin)
wrappers around the native iOS libraries.  We wanted to write as
much in OCaml as possible.

As we say on the website, the OO subsystem of OCaml is very helpful
for this.  We have essentially a one-to-one correspondence between
native iOS (Cocoa Touch) classes and OCaml classes.

Even though we follow the Cocoa Touch design, we find that OCaml still
has advantages in the GUI implementation.  It's nice not to have to
worry so much about object lifetimes, for example.  We use idiomatic
OCaml values for the low-level objects (like points and rectangles)
and for small collections (where ObjC often uses rather cumbersome
class instances).  Often you can use the powerful parts of OCaml on
the components of your GUI.

Regards,

Jeffrey