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Can you define what you mean by "the ugliest"? SML is used in academics because the language is very well-defined(both semantically and typing rules) and all t
by xfer 9y ago
Can you define what you mean by "the ugliest"?
SML is used in academics because the language is very well-defined(both semantically and typing rules) and all the fundamentals of typed functional programming, so it is preferred for teaching. Ocaml is a moving goalpost, and the language has no formal specification, afaik.
- hajile 9y agoThe fact that the implementation is the spec is a large part of the issue. Someone feels like adding a feature, so they just tack it on somewhere until the language has a million syntactic features littered everywhere. The experimentation aspect is nice, but to me, the final product is an unwieldy Frankenstein (though still better than many more popular languages). http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/ http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/ SML is nice enough as is, but the progress with Successor ML to gradually add the best of Ocaml on top is a very appealing option. As a personal gripe, both languages need better Unicode support.