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

[Paul Pelzl]

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.  

Paul