From: Dan Doel <djd15@...>
Date: 2003-08-22T02:48:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Rite/Ruby2.0 & Ruby vs OCaml

MikkelFJ wrote:

>You cannot avoid C when intergrating languages unless you go to a
>wireprotocol such as XML-RPC (supported by OCaml and Ruby) or you use a
>component technology like COM (not sufficiently supported in both Ruby or
>OCaml).
>  
>

This always confuses me a bit.  Is the reason for needing to use C that 
both OCaml and Ruby are
written in C?  For example, I can understand that you can't interface 
Java and Ruby without either
writing Ruby in something that compiles to JVM bytecode, or using JNI to 
link to native code.

But OCaml compiles to machine code, doesn't it?  Would it only be 
possible to interface with
OCaml directly if you wrote Ruby in OCaml (I assume that's the main 
problem)?

I guess that's a good reason for keeping Ruby written in C (that is, if 
we somehow got a
compiler from Ruby to machine code, and were able to write Ruby in 
Ruby), because if all
languages are implemented in C, or can interface with C easily, they can 
all be linked together.

I guess I've answered my own question to some degree. :)

If I'm wrong anywhere, feel free to correct me.

- Dan