03:31 <wimp> sorry, went afk

03:34 <Smerdyakov> "code/data being one".... I don't find that this makes sense in general.

04:43 <wimp> lol; I think I heard about you from the #scheme channel

04:44 <wimp> I'd appreciate hearing your argument for ocaml

04:44 <Smerdyakov> I usually prefer Standard ML when I have a choice.

04:45 <Smerdyakov> The main reasons for ML or Haskell over Scheme are: increased compiler support in finding bugs, more language support for compiling efficient binaries, and the universal use of types to structure and document program modules.

04:46 <wimp> does fast prototyping die off?

04:46 <wimp> do you actually find it faster (dev time; not run time) to code in ocaml rather than scheme?

04:47 <Smerdyakov> Fast prototyping works much better with strong compiler analysis.

04:47 <Smerdyakov> You don't have to understand your temporary prototype as well, because the compiler does it for you.

04:47 <wimp> this seems all nice untril

04:47 <wimp> you get a complex structure that the compiler doesn't understand

04:47 <wimp> then all seems really ugly

04:48 <Smerdyakov> What do you have in mind?

04:48 <wimp> I don't know; I just recall reading online of certain constructs

04:48 <wimp> where H???-Milner type resolution can't resolve it

04:49 <Smerdyakov> Irrelevant without practical examples

04:49 <wimp> true

04:49 <wimp> on another note

04:50 <wimp> how's ocaml's performance when dealing with numeric computations

04:50 <wimp> like matrices ?

04:50 <Smerdyakov> I don't know about the current implementation, but it's hard to imagine another general language approach that is better suited to compilation of efficient binaries performing numeric computations.

04:51 <Smerdyakov> In general, you want Standard ML if you care a lot about performance, and you use MLton.

04:51 <wimp> SML beats ocaml in performance?

04:52 <Smerdyakov> MLton does. Obviously you have to talk about compilers, not languages.

04:53 <wimp> wow, the orelse and andalso of sml seems really weird

04:54 <wimp> if you don't mind one more stupid question

04:54 <wimp> how does sml and ocaml cmopare?

04:55 <Smerdyakov> Besides the OO in OCaml, there is no deep difference.

04:55 <wimp> does SML have the ocaml preprocessor too?

04:55 <Smerdyakov> No.

04:58 <wimp> does ocaml support dynamic typing?

04:58 <wimp> err scoping

04:58 <Smerdyakov> No.

05:03 <Smerdyakov> Why do you want dynamic scoping?

05:12 <wimp> just curious if it supports it

05:12 <wimp> human brains are kind of dynamically scoped, no?

05:13 <Smerdyakov> I don't know what that means or what it has to do with software engineering.

15:23 <holo> hi

15:23 <holo> "A space should always follow a delimiter symbol" <- i'm not proficient in english, what does that mean? the space should go after the delimeter?

15:24 <flux__> yes

15:24 <holo> but to follow is to go behind something so it would be space+delimeter

15:25 <holo> but ok, i think too that is delimiter+space

15:27 <mikeX> no follow in this context means after

15:28 <mikeX> john died, jane followed him a year later

15:30 <mikeX> even in the way you put it holo, (e.g. he was being followed), it still means someone was going *after* him

16:39 <be> Hello, I'm currently working on a project which needs to read in a bit (usually less than 1mb) of binary data into an array representation. I'm currently using OCaml channels, but these don't allow me to read in a chunk of binary data, rather I must read in each byte at a time (quite time consuming in comparison). Has anyone found a way to read an aribitrary amount of binary data into an array? Thanks for your help.

17:56 <_JusSx_> hi i need to know about lexers and parsers

17:57 <_JusSx_> may you suggest me any links?

18:05 <sieni> for ocaml or in general?

18:05 <_JusSx_> in general

18:06 <sieni> maybe wikipedia articles are a good start?

18:07 <sieni> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexer

18:07 <sieni> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parser