[clean-list] Clean in the Real World

[Marco Kesseler]

On Fri, 2003-12-05 at 10:25, fzuurbie@inter.nl.net wrote:
> Bill,
> 
> > 1) Has Clean been used successfully for large, deployed,  production-
> > grade
> >     applications?
> 
> The Clean compiler, the Clean IDE, the Sparkle proof tool. Clean lacks
> exception handling though. If (a part of) an application runs out of
> stack or heap space, the application just quits. If you want to tell
> the user that a certain action cannot be completed because of a memory
> restriction, you have to detarmine the memory needs in advance (if you
> can) and explicitly program a test on that.

I do agree that dealing with memory requirements can be difficult in a
lazy functional language, but I am not sure what kind of handling you
have in mind when a program REALLY runs out of memory. I know of plenty
commercial software that "just quits" in those circumstances.

Now on systems with a lot of virtual memory it may take a while before
you reach that situation, but then it REALLY takes a while, because your
system starts trashing.

As to convincing management to use Clean: this has usually nothing to do
with technical issues. Try to convince them not to do what everybody
else does, and not to blame you personally when it fails.

regards,
Marco