[Haskell-cafe] Google Summer of Code idea of project & application

[Richard O'Keefe]

On scoping the project: be clear about the actual goal.
If you want to take existing Haskell libraries and use them
in OCaml, then you pretty much have to deal with the full
language.  You should start by using as much as you can of
an existing compiler, or by getting an unmodified compiler
to convert source code to "Core" syntax.

As just one example, a recent thread concerned implementing
lock-free containers.  I don't expect converting one of those
to OCaml to be easy...

If, however, you want to make it possible for someone to
write code in a sublanguage of Haskell that is acceptable
to a Haskell compiler and convert just *that* to OCaml, you
might be able to produce something useful much quicker.

It has long been my opinion that the TV series "Butt-Ugly
Martians" was inspired by OCaml syntax.  I keep being attracted
by other features of OCaml, but unable to bring myself to use
its syntax.  (I have much the same problem with F#, and if
SML.NET -- www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/tsg/SMLNET/ -- had been
updated in the last nearly 6 years I would not be looking at
F# at all.)  Never mind popularising Haskell to OCaml users;
this could be a way of popularising OCaml to Haskell users.

One of the reasons Harrop gives for preferring F# to OCaml is
that F# supports true multicore concurrency, while OCaml
apparently still doesn't.