Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?

From: jean-marc alliot (alliot@recherche.enac.fr)
Date: Thu Apr 13 2000 - 15:38:12 MET DST

  • Next message: T. Kurt Bond: "Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?"

    I don't want to be caught in a religion war, but I think that our own
    experience can be interesting.

    We are a small laboratory working inside a much larger structure (the
    Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aérienne, or CENA), which belongs
    itself to a much larger structure (the Direction Générale de l'Aviation
    Civile, or DGAC).
    For people who do not know the french system, you can consider the CENA
    somewhat like a small MITRE Corporation in the USA, and the DGAC is the
    french equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration.

    Software development is a vital concern for our administration. Air
    Trafic Control systems are highly dependant on computers and computer
    programs. Very large amount of money are spent for software development
    and software support (I don't have the exact figures, but it should be
    around 50 M$ (million dollars). I can be wrong but the magnitude is
    correct).

    Currently, CAML is not used in what we call industrial development. On
    the opposite it is used for R&D. Inside our lab we all develop in CAML
    and some of the softwares we have developped are now used in other R&D
    ATC centers, but also used for some more operational applications, like
    the evaluation of airspace sectoring.

    Here is an extremely (IMHO) interesting example, which was out first
    real experience in CAML. We had an arithmetic traffic simulator written
    in C a few years ago (a traffic simulator is something which reads raw
    flight plans, makes aircraft fly, and writes lot of interesting
    statistics about air traffic sector overloading, air traffic conflicts
    and can even solve conflicts).
    This software had become difficult to maintain over the years. It was
    quite large, with lot of features. We decided to rewrite it completely
    in CAML.
    The results were better than anything we might have expected. The size
    of the code was reduced by a factor of 4, lot of bugs were solved and it
    became only slightly slower (10%).

    I don't think that CAML needs anything more to be accepted by industry,
    from a technical point of view. I have developped applications in many
    different languages(ADA, C, C++,...), and I began to use CAML much
    later. Even if I would not be as harsh as Jean-Christophe Filliatre, I
    agree with him very much. CAML is fast, easy to use, reliable, its
    standard library is powerful, strong typing corrects lot of bugs,
    dynamic typing is a real comfort compared to ADA.
    Moreover, the CAML team is certainly one of the most brilliant and
    efficient development team I have dealt with. The language has always
    evolved smoothly and (according to me) in the right direction. Questions
    are always answered quickly and with a real kindness. You can't ask for
    more.

    I think that what CAML needs is time. When some of my (and others) young
    students will become software project managers, it will be easier for
    CAML to become an industry standard.
    Let's go teaching CAML !



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