Two quite interesting points to make here: 1. OCaml has a GIL and so, like CPython (*), is forced to use operating system processes to obtain parallelism. Also OCaml has imperative features, it is not a pure functional language. Clojure followed this route as well, using STM to deal with locking issues.
2. Haskell is a lazy language which means:
a. it can work with infinite data structures; and
b. it is incredibly difficult to create parallel codes.
Simon Peyton Jones and Simon Marlow have had to do a great deal of very
clever work to make Data Parallel Haskell, but it is to Haskell what
NumPy is to Python.
I am a fan of declarative expression, I prefer functional approaches
over explicitly imperative ones. For the moment though using single
assignment in imperative languages with all the lambda/closure
technology and using functional programming thinking is the best
compromise. OCaml (and its clone F#) and Haskell are likely to remain
tiny bit part players for a long while.
On the JVM the interesting question is whether Clojure finally makes
Lisp a mainstream language outside of one or two domains.
(*) PyPy is experimenting with STM to replace use of a GIL.
--
Russel.
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Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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