On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Todd Gillespie wrote:

> Steve Tuckner <SAT / multitech.com> wrote:
> : I was recently introduced to Objective Caml ( http://www.ocaml.org
> : <http://www.ocaml.org> ) but haven't had the time to understand it yet.
> : People who advocate for it though, seem to say that it is the future.  If
> : you look at it's strength's, you can see what they mean.
> 
> It does have a habit of winning the ICFPs.
> 
> : * Its very fast - many times it is as fast as straight C (I think speed is a
> : very legitimate issue. If you look at Pure Java applications, even on the
> : fastest machines they are still fairly pokey in my opinion -- aside from the
> : problem of garbage collection "freezes" -- see Sun's Forte)
> 
> Can you back this one up?  It is true that pure functionals allow for some
> impressive global optimizations, but I'm skeptical of a 'many times faster
> than C' claim.  C is just one layer up from assembler.

He said it was AS FAST AS C, and even then, not all the time.

> 
> : * It is a functional language and thus the programs written in it are more
> : possible to prove correct
> 
> This is true.  But pure functionals (Haskell in particular) can be
> notoriously difficult to use with foreign data, as integrating with the
> type system can be troublesome.
> 

Once libraries are written, this will become a non-issue.

> : * It is interpreted so it can be easily run everywhere
> : * With object extensions, it can do all the things that object languages can
> : do
> 
> This may be true, but one of the pleasing things about Ruby is its
> clean object syntax.  Extensions onto a language tend not to be as clean.
> 
> You have an interesting omission -- the ML type system, which is IMOH, the
> most valuable thing about the ML family.  It's a sophisticated static type
> system that infers all types -- no type declarations.  As this is
> traditionally what draws people to the MLs, you should look into it.
> 
> : Downsides? I don't know enough about it to know. One may be that it is
> : difficult to learn but that may just be my ignorance of the functional
> : programming paradigm.
> 
> I nominate you to go unto the wilderness and return unto us bearing the
> fruits of functional research.
> 
> : My question to the list is: Are object-oriented functional languages the
> : future instead of Ruby?
> 
> The only thing I know about the future is we will use progressively larger
> numbers to represent the date.
> But you might want to learn some languages now, as the present can be
> suprisingly long.
>