Whenever I see a Standard ML article/paper, it always reminds me that I still need to learn OCaml. Not that one is better than the other, just that I've not gotten around to learning OCaml yet.
Or Flix: https://flix.dev/
Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#12Whenever I see a Standard ML article/paper, it always reminds me that I still need to learn OCaml. Not that one is better than the other, just that I've not gotten around to learning OCaml yet.
I recommend F#. :)
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#13What is a good implementation to write SML on Mac M1? SML NJ didn't work IIRC
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#14What is a good implementation to write SML on Mac M1? SML NJ didn't work IIRC
PolyML is what I use.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, I would prioritize learning OCaml. The only thing SML has going for it is nicer syntax, and less stapled-on OOP stuff. OCaml's better in almost every way for day-to-day programming.
I feel like ... SML is the better language but OCaml is the better runtime/community. Sad.
SML definitely has a nicer formal definition but OCaml has better performance and a lot more functionalities. I wouldn’t say SML is the better language but the syntax definitely is cleaner.
Strangely I think SML focus on being well defined and tidy is why it never really took off. A language success is linked to its community and your features define who will want to join you. It seems to me that at the beginning it’s better to attract tinkerers than perfectionists.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, I would prioritize learning OCaml. The only thing SML has going for it is nicer syntax, and less stapled-on OOP stuff. OCaml's better in almost every way for day-to-day programming.
I feel like ... SML is the better language but OCaml is the better runtime/community. Sad.
Not necessarily. E.g. SML has had multicore since forever. In OCaml it’s the hot new thing now, which probably needs some time in the wild before everything is ironed out.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like ... SML is the better language but OCaml is the better runtime/community. Sad.
SML definitely has a nicer formal definition but OCaml has better performance and a lot more functionalities. I wouldn’t say SML is the better language but the syntax definitely is cleaner. Strangely I think SML focus on being well defined and tidy is why it never really took off. A language success is linked to its community and your features define who will want to join you. It seems to me that at the beginning it’…
> OCaml has better performance
That statement needs some evidence.
> a lot more functionalities
Past a certain minimal threshold of needed functionality, I prefer a language not to have a couple good features than to have a really bad one, like implementation inheritance, particularly multiple inheritance.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#18Does anyone here actually use SML for production or know of big projects (outside of academia) which uses it?
Compared to other functional langauges, it doesn't seem as popular.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, I would prioritize learning OCaml. The only thing SML has going for it is nicer syntax, and less stapled-on OOP stuff. OCaml's better in almost every way for day-to-day programming.
I feel like ... SML is the better language but OCaml is the better runtime/community. Sad.
OCaml is a much larger language than SML. SML feels cleaner in some ways. For example, it has overflow checks (or infinite precision) for integer arithmetic. (Although OCaml no longer has writable string literals …)
SML has multiple, mostly independent implementations with different characteristics. Poly/ML had multi-processor support well before OCaml. But OCaml development is certainly much more active.
Re: Programming in Standard ML (2011) [pdf]
#20This is both a comprehensive guide, and an excellent reference! I use it often when writing SML for side projects. For those interested in parallel, functional programming, I recommend taking a look at Futhark, which leverages data parallelism to make very fast parallel programs. It is based on SML, and has similar syntax, but can automatically build programs that (among other targets) run on the GPU using CUDA or Op…
Thanks a lot for the recommendation, it's exactly what I was looking for :)