[Ocaml-biz] Let's choose a market

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Tony Edgin wrote:
>
> Shishir is right.  We need to decide what meal we are going
> eating, not the
> utensil  we will use to eat dessert.  In plain old English,
> let's focus on
> our agreed action 1.  What market do we think it will be
> easiest for Ocaml to
> be use to create showcase projects?
>
> The ones mentioned so far in no particular order:
>
> 1) Unix-centric C developers.

I think this is too vague to count as a market.  Unix and C are used for
an awful lot of things.  Applications?  Data warehousing?  Web servers?
Embedded?  Realtime OS?  Security, firewalls?  Rendering farms?
Cryptographic challenges?  Academic research in conjunction with
supercomputers?

> 2) Matlab/Octave application developers.

That's a market.  I know little about it.

> 3) Windows and OS X game developers.

That's a market.  It is too difficult to directly address.  First a
cross-platform 3D engine is needed.  That would either be Nebula2 or a
from-scratch effort.  Unless you guys happen to be a bunch of 3D wizards
and want to join me in the crusade, it's too much work for our
resources.  Also it leaves the extant OCaml UNIX community out in the
cold, which would be a strategic mistake for getting people organized
and contributing.

> What are other markets?

4) CAD
5) simulation, engineering, FEM
6) scientific visualization
7) financial visualization
8) modeling, rendering, animation for film and TV
9) courtroom visualization

These are the other kinds of 3D graphics markets.  They happen on all
major platforms.  Developments here would aid game development.  Parts
of these markets don't require 3D graphics per se, but rather
mathematics.  One could spend time converting Fortran developers.

9) embedded

This is probably more than one market.  I know little about such
markets.

10) enterprise computing

Java and C#'s meat and potatoes.  I doubt OCaml is ready to take them on
in that space.


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

"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
                          - anonymous entrepreneur