[MLton-devel] Re: MLton and profiling

[Andreas Rossberg]

> Just to be clear, I did not mean to propose to make the language that
> Alice implements follow the standard.  I think playing with new
> features is great.  I was proposing that you make the language that
> implements Alice be standard.  That way you can use compilers other
> than SML/NJ to compile (and profile :-) your implementation.

Well, it already is quite a pain to go through NJ for bootstrapping. It 
would be so much more fun to be able to freely use all the cool Alice 
extensions in the compiler itself, instead of being restricted to the 
subset supported by NJ... :-)

>>Would you also oppose a collaborative attempt of all SML implementers to 
>>find a procedure for agreeing on certain extensions (that proved useful 
>>and mature enough) being promoted to the status of "quasi-standard"? To 
>>me, this seems to be a reasonable migration path to some SML+, whatever 
>>that will be called.
> 
> I think it would be great for this to happen.  As I said some time ago
> on sml-implementors, I would really like to see standardization of an
> FFI and CM/PM/whatever system.

Definitely. The course of last year's discussion wasn't too promising.

 > I personally don't know of any
> language features (subtyping, higher-order modules, ...) where the
> the benefit of adding them outweighs the cost.

I'm abolutely opposed to subtyping. HOM's would be cool. But I'd aim at 
simpler things for now. IMHO, two unfortunate holes in the language 
definitely need to be closed:

  * lack of "where" for whole structures
  * no "withtype" in signatures

Some trivial convenience extensions are also on my list (or patterns, 
vector expressions, functional record update, ...), but they're less 
important.

> A large part of my objection to the extensions in SML/NJ is not so
> much because they are extensions, but because there is no clear
> delineation between what is standard and what is not.  Consequently,
> many users think they are writing standard code when in fact they are
> not.

That's a problem, I agree. Of course, it is a PITA to discover and flag 
all uses of extensions during elaboration, particularly if they just 
generalise existing features. At least Claudio managed it pretty well 
for Moscow ML's modules. We didn't bother for Alice. *ducks*

-- 
Andreas Rossberg, rossberg@ps.uni-sb.de

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac Man affected us
  as kids, we would all be running around in darkened rooms, munching
  magic pills, and listening to repetitive electronic music."
  - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc.



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