[MLton] Hmmm.... ML

[Daniel C. Wang]

Do a book search for "Standard ML" and "Ocaml" on Amazon.com

That is my metric of "more understood"
ML is use in several introductory course in Europe and the US. There's 
tons more introductory teach material for it. (Written in English.. at 
least) then OCaml. Of course, I firmly believe that OCaml is a more 
"hacker" friendly community,  but in  terms of  anal retentiveness in 
the language definition and stability SML is the undisputed winner!

That should be the most important issue when you want to use it as a 
meta-language to define the semantics of another language.



skaller wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-10-21 at 19:28 -0700, Daniel C. Wang wrote:
>   
>> If you wanted me to ship something today, I'd use F#, C#, or Ocaml in 
>> that order of preference.
>>     
>
> If your clients run Linux or OSX, F# and C# are out of the
> question. That leaves Ocaml.
>
>   
>> However, if you wanted for my system to be a reference that will live 
>> around for several years and has to be understood by the widest set of 
>> people, I'd choose SML.
>>     
>
> I suspect more people know and use Ocaml than SML. I've never
> even heard of an actual SML user (except on this list of course!)
>
>   
>> The Ecmascript stuff is all about avoiding writing some hairy spec of 
>> the language and replacing it with code. I.e. it's meant mainly to be 
>> read and understood. It's a nice and important side effect that you can 
>> actually compile and run it.
>>     
>
> The fact people can compile and run language X is WHY 
> they can understand it!
>
> For example I know Ocaml reasonably well but I've
> never written a line of SML. Why? Because I don't
> have a working compiler.
>
> I once tried to build SML/NJ but it was hopeless
> and I gave up (this is 10 years ago, on a 16 bit
> machine .. :)
>
> I don't really know Haskell .. why? Because it isn't
> as well ported as Ocaml and I had to choose Ocaml
> over it since my product requires a high level translator
> which works on all popular platforms 'out of the box'.
> (at the time, including Windows .. and I don't mean
> Cygwin .. and now, also including OSX).
>
> Now I've learned a bit more Haskell .. since I've implemented
> typeclass support in Felix. Again, what I learned I learned
> by DOING .. not reading some specification.
>
> So I would argue -- that 'side effect' of being able to
> actually compile and run something is actually critical,
> much more so than the existence of a Standards document
> describing the language.
>
> Such documents are primarily for compiler implementors,
> library builders, and programmers worrying about corner
> cases of the language -- and they're likely to fall back
> on the document only if they really have to.
>
> For example most people .. including C++ standards people --
> will ask g++ what a questionable construction means long
> before resorting to reading the C++ Standard.
>
> So if you're writing a spec .. there's nothing like allowing
> your users to USE the spec by executing it .. and that
> is *Particularly* the case for you, the specification
> writer, to test that the spec if correct.
>
> In fact many standards are virtually given this way:
> typically Unicode standards come with reference implementations.
>
> BTW: I'm not disagreeing with you, so much as pointing
> out that the 'side-effect' is more important than you indicate
> because it is part of the feedback loop that is vital to
> human learning and thus comprehension.
>
> ML may be more stable, but Ocaml will still win if it
> has significantly more users.
>
>