[Ocaml-biz] The strategic future of OCaml for 2..4 years

[Brian Hurt]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Tony Edgin wrote:

> On Tue, 07 Sep 2004 04:32, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > There are at least three major "programming cultures" out there that I can
> > identify.  The first, as mentioned, is the C/Unit world.  The second is
> > the C++/Windows world, and the third Java.  Or, should I say, the Make,
> > VS, and Ant worlds.
> 
> Interesting point.
> 
> There is a fourth world out there, where I'm a dual citizen of.  Its the 
> Matlab world.  Don't laugh yet, I think this is a place Ocaml to gains some 
> footing.  

Oh, there's more cultures out there.  I didn't mention the lisp/scheme 
culture, the smalltalk culture, the fortran culture, the cobol culture, 
etc.

But the mention of the matlab culture is interesting, as it's an area I 
have a fair bit of interest in myself (although it's not one I have a lot 
of experience with).  Actually, Ocaml has a lot of advantages for going 
after this market- 1) functional programming isn't *that* weird, 2) 
performance vr.s either matlab or octave or any of the other competitors, 
3) static type checking, 4) open source/free.  Probably more.

What would it take to market successfully into this culture?  I'm assuming 
a really rocking linear algebra library.  I don't miss single-precision 
floats here, I miss extended precision floats.  Graphics you mentioned.


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Brian