Re: [Gnu-arch-users] OT: Lisp

[Neal D. Becker]

On Thursday 20 November 2003 14:29, Paul Pelzl wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 10:56:41AM -0800, Dustin Sallings wrote:
> > On Nov 20, 2003, at 5:38, Colin Walters wrote:
> > >Another language that's good to learn just for learning (and isn't
> > >quite
> > >"mainstream") is Objective Caml.  It's a very cool language too; the
> > >compiler is amazing.  But unlike Scheme and CL, I do occasional
> > >programming in OCaml for real work.
> >
> >     I'll have to second ocaml.  It's displacing python as a general
> > purpose language for me.  It doesn't ship with the library of tools
> > python does[0], but inferred static typing means not having to wait
> > until your program's been running for a couple of hours to realize you
> > passed the wrong variable to a function under a specific condition
> > (that was killing me in both a python and scheme version of an app I
> > was working on).
> >
> >     It's also insanely fast.  I'm used to high level languages
> >     sacrificing speed for ease of use.  ocaml gives a good deal of both.
> >
> > [0]:  Supposedly you can use perl libraries with it, but I'm not sure
> > about that idea just yet.
>
> I'll pop in just long enough to "third" Ocaml.  By the time I get my
> code past the compiler, it usually runs as expected the first time; that
> improves my productivity a lot.  The syntax is also pretty nice,
> particularly the ML pattern-matching construct.
>
> The standard library may not be as extensive as Python's, but it is
> well-rounded, has a consistent API, and is very fast.
>

Sounds like something I might want to learn.  It looks like there is no 
standard OCAML package for Linux?  Any pointers?  (I'm running Fedora1, if 
that matters).