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by joining the Caml Consortium (very cheap), we got access to the core developers and a yearly face-to-face. We're talking about Xavier Leroy and Damien Doligez

by quacker 12y ago

by joining the Caml Consortium (very cheap), we got access to the core developers and a yearly face-to-face. We're talking about Xavier Leroy and Damien Doligez here. Do you get that with Java? What do you find most useful about talking to core OCaml devs? If you were developing in Java, do you think you would see a similar benefit from talking to core Java devs? How do you find the OCaml standard library compares to standard libraries from other languages? Is it expansive? Do you find yourself reaching for 3rd party libraries frequently (or writing your own)?

avsm 12y ago
> What do you find most useful about talking to core OCaml devs? If you were developing in Java, do you think you would see a similar benefit from talking to core Java devs? OCaml (and Java, and Python, and any other "old" language) evolves in small steps to avoid breaking existing code. A forum like this allows language developers making those design decisions to check them with big users, as well as to gather the qualitative feedback that only comes from trying to use a feature in a production system. For example, OCaml's recent move in 4.02 towards immutable strings has generated a lot of debate [1] about the right tradeoffs to make with respect to backwards compatibility, and a number of the module system improvements such as module aliases have been driven by big libraries such as Core (to reduce compilation time and binary sizes). > How do you find the OCaml standard library compares to standard libraries from other languages? Is it expansive? I consider the OCaml "standard library" to actually mean the compiler standard library, since it really exists for the core toolchain to use. There are several alternatives that are one "open" statement away -- I've co-written a book about the Core library (see https://realworldocaml.org https://realworldocaml.org) for instance, which is extremely expansive. The OPAM package manager makes it trivial to use third-party packages now (http://opam.ocaml.org http://opam.ocaml.org), so the distinction between standard library or not is pretty moot now. > Do you find yourself reaching for 3rd party libraries frequently (or writing your own)? I've written my own operating system in OCaml, so I'm possibly the wrong person to ask about that... [1] http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/bytes1.html http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/bytes1.html
- judk 12y ago
  Java has JCP.

by quacker 12y ago

avsm 12y ago

> What do you find most useful about talking to core OCaml devs? If you were developing in Java, do you think you would see a similar benefit from talking to core Java devs? OCaml (and Java, and Python, and any other "old" language) evolves in small steps to avoid breaking existing code. A forum like this allows language developers making those design decisions to check them with big users, as well as to gather the qualitative feedback that only comes from trying to use a feature in a production system. For example, OCaml's recent move in 4.02 towards immutable strings has generated a lot of debate [1] about the right tradeoffs to make with respect to backwards compatibility, and a number of the module system improvements such as module aliases have been driven by big libraries such as Core (to reduce compilation time and binary sizes). > How do you find the OCaml standard library compares to standard libraries from other languages? Is it expansive? I consider the OCaml "standard library" to actually mean the compiler standard library, since it really exists for the core toolchain to use. There are several alternatives that are one "open" statement away -- I've co-written a book about the Core library (see https://realworldocaml.org https://realworldocaml.org) for instance, which is extremely expansive. The OPAM package manager makes it trivial to use third-party packages now (http://opam.ocaml.org http://opam.ocaml.org), so the distinction between standard library or not is pretty moot now. > Do you find yourself reaching for 3rd party libraries frequently (or writing your own)? I've written my own operating system in OCaml, so I'm possibly the wrong person to ask about that... [1] http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/bytes1.html http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/bytes1.html

judk 12y ago
Java has JCP.