[Ocaml-biz] The strategic future of OCaml for 2..4 years

[Blair Zajac]

Tony Edgin wrote:

> On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 04:32, Brian Hurt wrote:
> 
>>There are at least three major "programming cultures" out there that I can
>>identify.  The first, as mentioned, is the C/Unit world.  The second is
>>the C++/Windows world, and the third Java.  Or, should I say, the Make,
>>VS, and Ant worlds.
> 
> 
> Interesting point.
> 
> There is a fourth world out there, where I'm a dual citizen of.  Its the 
> Matlab world.  Don't laugh yet, I think this is a place Ocaml to gains some 
> footing.  
> 
> Because of the maturity of Matlab and its ubiquity in academics and 
> engineering industry, there is a growing number of applications being written 
> in Matlab.  Matlab has a fullfledged type-inferred programming language with 
> as well as extensive graphics, math, and engineering domain libraries.   The 
> developers of these applications come upon a few problems eventually.  First, 
> any customer which wants to use the developers' app needs Matlab, which will 
> cost them $2000 or more.  Second, it is dog slow.  When speed becomes an 
> issue, the standard is to migrate to C.  Matlab has features which allow the 
> developer to migrate incrementally to C, Fortran or Java.

Where does octave fit into this description?  As far as I understand, it's an 
open-source version of Matlab.

Regards,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair at orcaware.com>
Plots of your system's performance - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/