[mercury-users] Your opinion on Mercury is important....

[Ralph Becket]

Hi Dominique

> THEME		Topic				Your opinion
> -----		-----				------------
> Language	Type system			v. good
> 		Mode system			good
> 		Determinism system		good
> 		Strict I/O			good
> 		Cost of learning 		mid - high
> Development	Program construction		v. good
> 		Error location			v. good
> 		Error identification		v. good
> 		Error correction		v. good
> 		Adaptative maintenance		no experience
> 		Corrective maintenance		v. good
> 		Team development		no experience
> Implementation	Time efficiency of compiler	not bad
> 		Memory efficiency of compiler		no idea
> 		Time efficiency of applications		good
> 		Memory efficiency of applications	good
> 		Garbage collector			no opinion
> 		Correctness of compiler			good
> 		Quality of compiler M/M interface	eh?
> 		Quality of libraries			v. good
> Other		Other

I like Mercury a great deal.  Indeed, I would say that it is far and
away my preferred programming language for non-trivial coding work.

There are some things that really need to come soon.  In particular,
support for nested unique modes is a must with existential types
following up.  Also, the libraries should be revamped to take
advantage of typeclasses and exploit a functional style of programming
where possible.  Finally, it would be nice to have some friendlier
documentation + examples on using the compiler and debugger.  Oh, one
last niggle: sometimes implementation detail escapes in a non-harmful
way (e.g. nobody yet knows how to make abstract modes work) which is a
trifle ugly.

Other than that, it's a smashing piece of work.

Ralph

-- 
Ralph Becket  |  rwab1 at cam.sri.com  |  http://www.cam.sri.com/people/becket.html
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