Re: [Caml-list] Teaching OCaml

[Holger Schulz <schulz@mathematik.uni-siegen.de>]

Am 18.05.2004 um 10:52 schrieb Richard Jones:

>> Iif you want practical features of OCaml, you could try the classic
>> "QuickSort in n lines" where n depends on how efficient you want to
>> make it, but you can still achieve O(n log n) in something like 4
>> lines.  It takes 10 or so to be efficient, compared to at least 50 in
>> C.  Of course, Haskell has even nicer syntax for this, but it looks
>> good in O'Caml too.
>
> Sorry, but why is this a "practical" feature of OCaml?

I'm not quite sure if it is a practical feature but it is an important 
aspect on teaching programming to have code which is easy to survey.

> Anyone who uses OCaml to sort things will use List.sort, unless they
> have incredibly specialist sorting requirements, in which they
> certainly won't be using a 4-line implementation of quicksort.

Hm, learning algorithms includes implementimg them, even if that has 
been done before.

By the way: are the 4 or 10 line source available online anywhere? I'd 
like to take a look at.

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