[plt-scheme] Comments on OCaml by Schemers?

On 6/1/07, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> OCaml came up in a thread the other day.
>
> What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of that language,
> especially coming from Scheme?

I never tried OCaml but as a brief note from someone who briefly tried
SML a couple years ago and went through Paulson's book.
1 - I liked pattern matching (I implemented something similar in
scheme, posted here, and people mentioned plt-match which I use ever
since for various tasks)
2 - I liked some type annotation (lately contracts have been leaving
me very happy)
3 - I didn't like the SML syntax. In fact, I hated it. That's why each
time I see SML code I emit a horrible noise and think "Oh... if this
were to be scheme code..."

I even asked on the list if there was a way to interface SML with PLT
Scheme but the answer was "no" so there I was playing with SML for a
couple of months until I had what I wanted in Isabelle. After that, I
never returned. In fact I have THE OCaml book in my amazon wishlist...
but every time I buy a book I run away from getting it.

Cheers,

Paulo Matos

> _________________________________________________
>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>
>
>


-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK