Re: [GD-General] Objective Caml (was Ruby opinions)

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

At GDC last year, Chris Hecker raved about OCaml. One of the people who
works here heard it and has been suggesting for a while now that we look
at it.

After poking around several language comparison pages for a while, I'm a
bit amazed. It appears to be as fast and easy to write as say, Python,
the native compiler performance is consistently at the top of every
benchmark I've seen, plus there are implementations for PC, Mac, and
Unix. 

It looks a bit light on the library side, but it may prove to be a very
useful tools language and perhaps even a delivery language.

I've just downloaded a version and will start tinkering on my vacation.
I'll let you know in a week or so. ;-)

       Kent

Patrick M Doane wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 22 Dec 2001, Brian Hook wrote:
> 
> > Oh, and if anyone has opinions on BETA or OCaml, I'm all ears =)
> 
> Sure, I'll be an OCaml advocate for you.  I've been using it for years and
> feel I had a good understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. Here are
> some high-level points:
> 
>   - Excellent performance of runtime code and garbage collector
>   - Unifies many programming paradigms in a single language:
>       object-oriented, functional, traditional imperative
>   - Compilation times are fast and provide good diagnostic feedback
>   - Code is very portable between Windows and Unix
>   - Debugger supports replay functionality
>   - More 3rd party libraries than similar languages (e.g. Haskell/Clean)
>   - Powerful type-inference mechanism eliminating the need for most
>     type annotations
>   - Strict type-checker to catch many errors at compile time
> 
> Some specific points about the language:
> 
>   - First class functions - kind of like inner classes in Java but
>     syntax is very lightweight and easy to use
>   - Support for parametric polymorphism (extensional polymorphism
>     is in the works)
>   - Easy to define new data types and operate on them via pattern matching
>     (a generalized case statement that allows arbitralily deep
>     introspection)
>   - Exceptions
>   - Sophisticated module system including functors (a simple lamba
>     calculus on modules to support paramterization)
>   - OO framework with support for multiple inheritance, binary methods,
>     and functional updates
> 
> I'm not particularly interested in entering a debate over which language
> is better -- that's very much a personal choice.  Personally, I have a
> strong mathematical background and appreciate formalism and notation.
> For that reason, Haskell is in many ways a more attractive language to me.
> However, OCaml still remains my language of choice for any serious
> development work.
> 
> Patrick Doane
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-general mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-general

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Quirk                   | MindRover: "Astonishingly creative."
Game Architect               | Check it out!
ken...@co...      | http://www.mindrover.com/
_____________________________|_________________________________________