[Ocaml-biz] limits, libraries, technical markets

[Brian Hurt]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> A phenom in OCaml that very much concerns me:
> 
> - OCaml has some wart in its core functionality, like 31-bit ints, or
> 4MB array sizes, or string size limitations.

The definition of wart is in the beholder.  31-bit ints I would term a 
trade-off.  Yes, they're occassionally annoying, but we get faster GC in 
return, and they're only occassionally annoying.  Other times, they're 
mainly Ocaml not salvaging bad code.  The string size limitation that got 
brought up today in the main list is an example of this- the guy was 
wanting to read the entire file into a string.  Another example of this is 
the "performance" of string concatenate- which is regularly bitched about 
by people comming from python and etc.

I agree that the 4-meg limit on arrays is a wart.  All languages have 
warts.

> We'll have to be teaching Bigarray to get around array sizes, OCamlnet
> to get around string and file sizes.  A plethora of libraries to deal
> with warts, rather than a unified core that doesn't have them.  I see
> these problems as weakening the value proposition of OCaml for a
> business.

It is an educational problem, I agree.  But one that can be overcome with 
a good introductory book.

> 
> This could depend on the business, however.  I'd expect highly technical
> or engineering oriented businesses to be far less concerned about such
> warts, as they're used to things being ugly.  I'd expect corporate
> enterprises to throw hissies about this sort of thing, and distribute
> whitepapers that "OCaml didn't work" because they kept getting bit in
> the ass by various limits or library learning curves.

I've not seen them for any other language- most notably, neither Java or 
C++.  Both of which have serious warts.

> 
> I am suggesting it would be better for OCaml to chase technical or
> engineering markets at this time.  I don't think it's polished enough to
> take on Java and C# in the corporate enterprise yet.  Also, tech /
> engineering markets want both performance and reliability, the 2 core
> OCaml strengths.

This I agree with.

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Brian