[ocaml-biz] adjectives about OCaml

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Tony Edgin wrote:
>
> Mysterious and sexy are two implicit properties which would
> act as attention getters.

Ok, I gotta ask:

1) is this even vaguely appropriate for selling a language technology?
Usually when techies say a tech is 'sexy', they don't mean it's
literally a woman with nice gams and so forth.  They usually mean it
more in the sense of a hotrod or well oiled machine is 'sexy'.  I find
the connotation of 'mysterious' to be completely negative.  'Alluring'
is ok, but it has to be the right kind of lure.  A woman warrior with a
veil might ship a game, but it ain't gonna ship corporate enterprise
software.

2) even if you can argue that this is somehow vaguely appropriate to
OCaml, is INRIA going to buy into this?  I'm not even sure they'd laugh,
I bet they'd frown.  Or cry.  Xavier is so indecisive in such
matters....

> For
> instance, coffee drinking programmers identify with Java's
> steaming coffee cup.

Yes, that was a reasonably clever association.  I see "OCaml is a sexy
woman" as rather arbitrary.  It communicates nothing other than "sex
sells."  Well, unless she humps!

Linux came up with a penguin because programmers like cute shit and they
were marketing to programmers.  Er, maybe more properly spoken, they
weren't marketing at all.  They just did something that their own
demographic liked.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.