Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?

From: Jacques Garrigue (garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp)
Date: Fri Apr 21 2000 - 02:41:21 MET DST

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    > Vitaly Lugovsky wrote:
    > >
    > > P.S. Maybe, all that we need, is a RAD tool for ocaml? It can
    > > look like a better module finder ("module name" -> "file name" is not
    > > a good idea. Paths in Java is much better), and a lot of reusable
    > > modules for common tasks (database, GUI)...

    There are two different problems with RADs

    * making one requires lots of work, and is not necessarily very
      rewarding for the author, who himself can probably work
      without. That's the reason you don't find many RADs in the open
      source community.
      You can find an embryo of such a thing in lablgtk for instance, but
      I have no idea whether it will become really a full fledge RAD some
      day.

    * it is not so clear how useful it would be for a language like ocaml.
      Code in ocaml is much more compact than in C++ or JAVA, so that code
      generation is not so useful in itself. I agree that this might be
      nice for beginners, but if it is nice for beginners only, then it's
      even harder to find the workforce.

    As for paths versus module=file name, well, there were discussions
    among developpers, and it is not so clear which is best, considering
    also that this has to be integrated transparently with the
    module/functor system.
    >From a language abstraction point of view, the idea of writing file
    paths inside programs doesn't sound so nice. A simpler solution would
    be to provide an easy way to indicate which package one wants to use
    from the ocamlc command line. Something like having "-I +package"
    automatically expanded to "-I /usr/local/lib/ocaml/package".

    From: Max Skaller <maxs@in.ot.com.au>

    > There already is one: the lablbrowser. It's quite
    > good functionally -- but the interface sucks.

    Name has changed, it is now ocamlbrowser.
    As Vitaly answered, this is not a RAD, but more a kind of IDE, more
    centered on library browsing than project building.

    As always I admire how constructive your comments are :-)

    The interface is that way because I like it that way:
    * the main functionality is in one small window that I can keep on my
      screen all the time.
    * there is one window by module, because I often want to browse
      several modules simultaneously.
    * editor functionality is reduced to a minimum, because real
      programmers use emacs anyway.

    If you don't like the interface you could explain why, and say what
    you think would be a nice interface, for instance.

    Jacques
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Jacques Garrigue Kyoto University garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp
                    <A HREF=http://wwwfun.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/>JG</A>



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