RE: ocaml?? why?? (was: [Xen-devel] caml stubdom crashes)

[Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Besides, I wouldn't dream of hiring anyone who couldn't 
> become proficient in a new programming language in a couple 
> of weeks just by looking at some existing source code.

I'm just pointing out that the open source community
is a good deal dependent on developers who are less
than the creme de la creme.  There's many who you (or
I) might not hire that could make a valuable contribution
to an open source project, and might (would!) get scared
away by a completely unfamiliar language... especially
one they've previously never heard of!

> Anyhow, I think we're just a bit ahead of the general 
> adoption curve on this one.

Indeed!  The following websites would imply "well ahead"
rather than "a bit ahead":

http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/comp.lang-statistics/
http://www.langpop.com/

On the latter, at least ocaml has passed Lua(??) and is
catching up with assembly and smalltalk!

If ocaml (or haskell or F# or the sum of ALL functional
languages) grows exponentially, no problem.  If it turns
out to be a fad (or even just grows linearly), having
a huge base of code could be a significant albatross for
the future of Xen.  I wonder what would have happened
to Linux if Linus was an Ada fan :-)

Alright then, I'm not going to try to tilt at windmills,
at least by myself.  If nobody else is going to speak up
on the no-ocaml side, I will meekly go back to coding
in C in the hypervisor. :-)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Pratt [mailto:Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 5:37 PM
> To: Dan Magenheimer; Samuel Thibault
> Cc: Alex Zeffertt; Patrick Colp; xen-devel; George S. Coker, 
> II; Samuel
> Thibault; Ian Pratt
> Subject: RE: ocaml?? why?? (was: [Xen-devel] caml stubdom crashes)
> 
> 
> > > They already do: XenEnterprise is mostly implemented in ocaml.
> > 
> > Well, I suppose that's a good datapoint.  I wonder if the world's
> > supply of ocaml programmers all work for Citrix/Xensource. ;-)
> 
> Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 includes an F# compiler, and I 
> think you'll see Microsoft pushing f# quite heavily over the 
> coming years as a next generation programming language. 
> 
> F# is to first approximation OCAML with slightly changed 
> syntax. Rumour has it that the Microsoft F# compiler has a 
> mode where it will even accept plain OCAML... 
> 
> Anyhow, I think we're just a bit ahead of the general 
> adoption curve on this one.
>  
> As regards finding OCAML programmers, many European 
> Universities teach OCAML/ML and have done for many years. 
> Besides, I wouldn't dream of hiring anyone who couldn't 
> become proficient in a new programming language in a couple 
> of weeks just by looking at some existing source code. Beyond 
> XenSource/Citrix there are a bunch of other companies using 
> OCAML in a number of industries, particularly financial. 
> 
> It was a big risk when XenSource decided to adopt OCAML back 
> in 2005, but the experience has been very positive and has 
> undoubtedly improved code quality and accelerated 
> development. The tool chain has proved to be remarkably 
> stable -- about par as regards our experience with code 
> generation bugs in gcc over the same period, and certainly 
> the language is a _lot_ more stable as regards compiler 
> warnings -Werror etc. 
> 
> Anyhow, I've been converted from an OCAML sceptic, to a "go 
> ahead and use it where it makes sense". I'd be happy to see 
> OCAML in the main xen tree -- in fact there's already quite a 
> bit in the XenClient tree. 
> 
> Have a go writing some code and see how you like it in practice.
> 
> Ian
> 
> 
> > But I'd question whether one good datapoint in a controlled
> > single-product single-company focused startup environment
> > is a good representation of the problems that might occur
> > in a broader (e.g. open source) bazaar.
> > 
> > > No problem so far with the language itself.
> > 
> > This would seem to disagree with *No* problems.
> > http://cufp.galois.com/2008/slides/MadhavapeddyAnil.pdf
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Samuel Thibault [mailto:samuel.thibault@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > > Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 3:38 PM
> > > To: Dan Magenheimer
> > > Cc: xen-devel; Patrick Colp; Alex Zeffertt; George S. Coker,
> > > II; Samuel
> > > Thibault
> > > Subject: Re: ocaml?? why?? (was: [Xen-devel] caml stubdom crashes)
> > >
> > >
> > > Dan Magenheimer, le Thu 02 Apr 2009 12:39:04 -0700, a écrit :
> > > > In other words, it may be a very fine academic/research
> > > > language... but do we really want enterprise customers'
> > > > critical workloads dependent on it?
> > >
> > > They already do: XenEnterprise is mostly implemented in ocaml.  No
> > > problem so far with the language itself.  Personally, the
> > > fact that the
> > > ocaml compiler is itself written in ocaml (typesafe blablabla
> > > language)
> > > makes me trust it more that any gcc compiler.
> > >
> > > Samuel
> > >
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xen-devel mailing list
> > Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>

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