OCaml 4.04.0 released • Hacker News Board

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#11

Post by jallmann » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 3:09 AM UTC

desireco42 wrote: post #5

Just finishing OCaml course at Paris Diderot www.fun-mooc.fr/login?next=/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02 Really cool language and opened my eyes on how some constructs are being used. Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought)

> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought)

...why?

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#12

Post by i_s » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

jallmann wrote: post #11

desireco42 wrote: post #5

Just finishing OCaml course at Paris Diderot www.fun-mooc.fr/login?next=/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02 Really cool language and opened my eyes on how some constructs are being used. Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought)

> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought) ...why?

May be worth exploring this from the other side too. Why do you think it is ok for a programming language to lock people into to using just 1 core per process?

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#13

Post by DonPellegrino » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 4:43 AM UTC

desireco42 wrote: post #5

Just finishing OCaml course at Paris Diderot www.fun-mooc.fr/login?next=/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02 Really cool language and opened my eyes on how some constructs are being used. Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought)

F# lacks all the most advanced module capabilities of OCaml, is tied to the CLR and isn't free of the Null problem.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#14

Post by thinkpad20 » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 4:58 AM UTC

i_s wrote: post #12

jallmann wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought) ...why?

May be worth exploring this from the other side too. Why do you think it is ok for a programming language to lock people into to using just 1 core per process?

I think most would agree that multicore capability is desirable, but it's clearly not a "must" as ocaml has been without it all of this time and many have used it to good effect regardless (of course it might be a must to certain people who need it for their use case). Also, the same restriction that prevents multicore in ocaml (the GIL) also affects other languages which are obviously useful, such as Python. So to answer your question it's clearly "ok" since it doesn't prevent people from productively writing effective and useful software in it, although it is of course a restriction which many would like to see go away.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#15

Post by whateveracct » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:01 AM UTC

i_s wrote: post #12

jallmann wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought) ...why?

May be worth exploring this from the other side too. Why do you think it is ok for a programming language to lock people into to using just 1 core per process?

To be fair, the current multiprocess approach that OCaml concurrency libraries use handles the most common concurrency need (concurrent io) just fine. Multicore is most useful for CPU-bound computations.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#16

Post by murbard2 » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

I apologize for the plug, but I invite folks who like OCaml to check-out Tezos, a project for a self-amending blockchain in OCaml. http://github.com/tezos

I think it's a really neat piece of engineering that demonstrates the strength of the language. We have some really nice uses of the GADT and we try and squeeze as much guarantees as we can out of the type system. The modules give us a natural way to follow the principle of least authority by restricting the visible surface of each implementation layer as much as possible.

Some of the core Tezos developers are also behind the recent mooc and work on the OCaml compiler.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#17

Post by Scarbutt » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 7:57 AM UTC

jallmann wrote: post #11

desireco42 wrote: post #5

Just finishing OCaml course at Paris Diderot www.fun-mooc.fr/login?next=/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02 Really cool language and opened my eyes on how some constructs are being used. Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought)

> Multicore is definitely must for functional languages.(sorry random thought) ...why?

Definitely not a must, I guess he may be referfing to how immutability and pure functions bring great benefits for writing concurrent programs.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#18

Post by raphinou » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 8:09 AM UTC

I really like ocaml, but it could do with better community management I think. Eg it's been more than one week that the links of the news section on the homepage result in a white page. This might deter newcomers to even try it.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#19

Post by skiplist1 » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 10:07 AM UTC

I would like to see a language like haskell with no delayed or lazy evaluation so that one can better predict performance. Haskell has a great community and a charm that I would like for Ocaml. Don't know if Jane Street is still advocating their Ocaml core or kernel. F#, ml, haskell and OCaml, and a strong language for parallelism whose name I don't remember are hints that we need a better language. Haskell is not prepared for real world :), and OCaml is a turtle moving target.

Re: OCaml 4.04.0 released

#20

Post by sigrlami9 » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 10:15 AM UTC

skiplist1 wrote: post #19

I would like to see a language like haskell with no delayed or lazy evaluation so that one can better predict performance. Haskell has a great community and a charm that I would like for Ocaml. Don't know if Jane Street is still advocating their Ocaml core or kernel. F#, ml, haskell and OCaml, and a strong language for parallelism whose name I don't remember are hints that we need a better language. Haskell is not pr…

Haskell has strict extension that removes all delayed/lazy computation from your code. Why do you think it's not ready for real world? It's used by numerous companies around the World for different kinds of software development, starting from formal verification and ending with web sites. Same for OCaml, both languages are very powerful.