On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 8:49 AM <gdiaz(a)qswarm.com> wrote:
Was sml/nj part of UNIX at some point? was it
considered as a language to
use
(proof tools may be)?
I was wondering if there is any history in common between the two. I've
been
unable to find anything :-?, please share your stories! :-D
There was certainly proximity, if not a direct connection.
Is it true that the language was too slow to be generally useful? There
seems
to be commentaries along these lines on the internet.
This question is difficult to answer. As a _langage_ there's little that
makes SML inherently slow; the MLton compiler does full-program
optimization with advanced optimizations and generates code that's pretty
performant. There are certainly other SML implementations that generate
slow code; MoscowML comes to mind: it generates a byte code that's not
known for speed. SML/NJ is pretty zippy, but I've never tried to write
anything performance-critical with it.
- Dan C.