Re:The Next Step for Generics
by still_grokking on Thursday June 18, 2020 @07:52AM
(#23562182)
Funny that I also always claim D being "the better Go". It has a very similar compilation and runtime model. But D is a much more powerful language, it's not "dumbed down to the max". For people that like Go's runtime model but don't see "simplified at all costs" as an advantage D could be just right.
OCaml is used, for instance, as a main language in Jane Street which is a top prop trading firm. They also are the main sponsors of the language and contribute a lot to the compiler, but that doesn't invalidate the point.
Yes.
We also used OCaml at Bloomberg quite a bit. (And they are still using it, but I'm not there anymore.)
But there's not that much more in the commercial OCaml world.
Haskell has actually a bit of a broader adoption. The open source library situation is also better.
(For the record, I like both OCaml and Haskell. And Janestreet are doing a great job.
And commercial and open source adoption are important. But they are not the end to every discussion.)
If anything, you should have asked about the prospects of OCaml, shouldn't you? (Spoiler alert: they are grimmer than Haskell's.)
Mostly, Go is full of wasted opportunities. It would have perhaps been a worthwhile language had they come up with Go instead of C in the 1970s. https://github.com/ksimka/go-is-not-good is a good summary.
I would suggest having a look at D as an example of what an evolution of C could look. An evolution with fewer wasted opportunities.