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.