RE: [Sml-implementers] SML IDE as language promotion

[Nick B. <ni...@mi...>]

We have a handful of users we know about (though in my dreams there are
thousands of people using it successfully who never get in touch because
it just works). You're absolutely right: availability of an IDE really
doesn't seem to be sufficient to drive language adoption.
Interoperability and easy access to rich libraries are, as you say, much
more important. But we've got those too - that's the point of SML.NET -
and I still can't really pretend there's a mass stampede towards SML.

The people who like SML just don't seem all that keen on writing
applications other than theorem provers and SML compilers. There's no
language advocacy and it's perhaps seen as old-ish and academic rather
than new and cool. (Or whatever the cool word for cool is.) OCaml has a
better image and a much wider and more active community. Part of that
is, I think, still down to tools: the SML community still hasn't quite
hit the sweet spot here, despite having a bunch of high-quality
implementations, each of which excels in some aspect. But there are
other social/community/marketing factors at work. I think the contrast
between the title and contents of Larry's (absolutely lovely, don't get
me wrong....) textbook is a dead giveaway here :-)

  Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: nb...@ra... [mailto:nb...@ra...] On Behalf Of Nick
Barnes
Sent: 14 March 2005 10:31
To: Nick Benton
Cc: Alexandre; sml...@li...
Subject: Re: [Sml-implementers] SML IDE as language promotion=20

At 2005-03-12 12:34:17+0000, "Nick Benton" writes:
> SML.NET is integrated into Visual Studio (and so too are F# and even
> Haskell now).
>=20
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/TSG/SMLNET/
>=20
> You can write mixed-language projects (e.g. SML/C#/VB, which is
> particularly handy if you want to use the visual designers to generate
> C# for a GUI with SML logic behind). You get syntax highlighting,
> bracket matching, continuous syntax and type-checking, you can hover
> over expressions and patterns to see their type, Intellisense
completion
> on both .NET and SML libraries, source code debugging (set
breakpoints,
> step through mixed-language code, examine bindings, etc.).=20

This is pretty cool.  Do you know whether anyone is using it?

> It's also worth remembering that, way back in the last century,
> Harlequin's now-defunct MLWorks system had an ML-specific development
> environment with some pretty nice features.

You're too kind.

Nick Barnes
ex-MLWorker
Director
Ravenbrook Limited