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C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

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Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#11

Post by rwmj »

tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Let's see: opam as you mention. Loads of new libraries[0]. Lots of small evolutions in the language in OCaml 4 [1] [2]. Lots of work on optimization in ocamlopt. Aarch64, POWER7 & POWER8, replacement ARMv7 backends.

OCaml is totally a practical language for writing real world applications. As I usually point out in these threads, Red Hat pay me to write OCaml programs[3], that are used by thousands of customers and many more free software users worldwide. The advantages (over other languages, not C++) are: easy linking to C libraries, and builds a native binary with no extra dependencies, speed. Advantages over C++: safety, robustness, compact source code size.

[0] https://opam.ocaml.org/packages/

[1] https://ocaml.org/meetings/ocaml/2014/OCaml2014-Leroy-slides...

[2] https://ocaml.org/meetings/ocaml/2013/slides/leroy.pdf

[3] https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#12

Post by eatonphil »

rwmj wrote: post #11
tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Let's see: opam as you mention. Loads of new libraries[0]. Lots of small evolutions in the language in OCaml 4 [1] [2]. Lots of work on optimization in ocamlopt. Aarch64, POWER7 & POWER8, replacement ARMv7 backends. OCaml is totally a practical language for writing real world applications. As I usually point out in these threads, Red Hat pay me to write OCaml programs[3], that are used by thousands of customers and m…

You write OCaml for Red Hat programs that customers use? Or you write OCaml for Red Hat customers' programs? Either way, care to share any examples?

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#13

Post by mercurial »

tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Scheme and OCaml don't have that much in common really (unless you mean derivatives like typed racket, but even then).

OWebl, in spite of its shiny website, is not what I would call "popular". You want to look at opium[1] or ocsigen/eliom [2].

Don't know what you have against OPAM, it's the best language-specific dependency manager I know.

1: https://github.com/rgrinberg/opium 2: http://ocsigen.org/eliom/

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#14

Post by tacos »

rwmj wrote: post #11
tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Let's see: opam as you mention. Loads of new libraries[0]. Lots of small evolutions in the language in OCaml 4 [1] [2]. Lots of work on optimization in ocamlopt. Aarch64, POWER7 & POWER8, replacement ARMv7 backends. OCaml is totally a practical language for writing real world applications. As I usually point out in these threads, Red Hat pay me to write OCaml programs[3], that are used by thousands of customers and m…

Looks like solid work all around. But if we could weigh it relative to the advancements in C++ the last decade, it wouldn't even show up on the scale.

Red Hat could pay someone to do exactly what you're doing in many other languages with the exact same results. The only difference would be that the language in question would show up on the StackOverflow list of "most loved" or "most wanted" languages. Rust shows up in 50th place with less than 0.2% share and OCaml doesn't even make that list (TIOBE 9/2015).

Sounds argumentative, but is a genuine question: why have you chosen OCaml for this? What is so remarkable about it for this use case that 50+ more popular languages wouldn't do it?

Obviously there are downsides, so what is the upside?

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#15

Post by Scramblejams »

eatonphil wrote: post #12
rwmj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see: opam as you mention. Loads of new libraries[0]. Lots of small evolutions in the language in OCaml 4 [1] [2]. Lots of work on optimization in ocamlopt. Aarch64, POWER7 & POWER8, replacement ARMv7 backends. OCaml is totally a practical language for writing real world applications. As I usually point out in these threads, Red Hat pay me to write OCaml programs[3], that are used by thousands of customers and m…

You write OCaml for Red Hat programs that customers use? Or you write OCaml for Red Hat customers' programs? Either way, care to share any examples?

See rwmj's reference [3].

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#16

Post by Drup »

tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Hum, OWebl doesn't exist. The author made some buzz because he's decent at marketing (and much better at it than the rest of the OCaml community, clearly), but it doesn't mean it's a thing.

There are other (good) web frameworks in OCaml (ocsigen, opium).

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#17

Post by joe_the_user »

Amazingly, there is no easy way to define a type in C++ which can be "one of these or one of these", e.g. a sphere or a group in this case.

The author may have assumptions I'm missing here but the standard way to have a "one of these or one of these" thing is to have two classes inherent from a given abstract base class and use a pointer to the base class.

If one wants the device specifically as a type, one could wrap the base-pointer in a class.

Is there something I'm missing?

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#18

Post by tacos »

Drup wrote: post #16
tacos wrote: post #3

And now's a perfect time to reflect on how the two languages evolved during the past decade. C++ obviously moved forward quite a bit -- cleaning up the loop constructs in particular. OCaml? Uh... there's F# for realists, Scheme for optimists, and Haskell for pedants. If you're actually writing OCaml web apps in OWebl I'd sure love to know why. Amazon released a native C++ SDK for AWS if you're into pain. If you're us…

Hum, OWebl doesn't exist. The author made some buzz because he's decent at marketing (and much better at it than the rest of the OCaml community, clearly), but it doesn't mean it's a thing. There are other (good) web frameworks in OCaml (ocsigen, opium).

https://github.com/eatonphil/owebl

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#19

Post by the_af »

joe_the_user wrote: post #17

Amazingly, there is no easy way to define a type in C++ which can be "one of these or one of these", e.g. a sphere or a group in this case. The author may have assumptions I'm missing here but the standard way to have a "one of these or one of these" thing is to have two classes inherent from a given abstract base class and use a pointer to the base class. If one wants the device specifically as a type, one could wra…

> The author may have assumptions I'm missing here but the standard way to have a "one of these or one of these" thing is to have two classes inherent from a given abstract base class and use a pointer to the base class.

I think this is what the author describes in the sentence that follows the one you quoted. He also calls it "a common (ab)use of object oriented programming."

Re: C++ vs. OCaml: Ray tracer comparison (2005)

#20

Post by Drup »

tacos wrote: post #18
Drup wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum, OWebl doesn't exist. The author made some buzz because he's decent at marketing (and much better at it than the rest of the OCaml community, clearly), but it doesn't mean it's a thing. There are other (good) web frameworks in OCaml (ocsigen, opium).

https://github.com/eatonphil/owebl

Yes, please open up the code, notice how the implementation of HTTP handling is approximately 30 lines long, and ask yourself if you would actually want to use that. ;)
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