From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id TAA12145 for caml-red; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 19:37:45 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id GAA05018 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 06:31:47 +0100 (MET) Received: from sanson.reyes.somos.net (freyes.static.inch.com [216.223.199.224]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id eAA5ViH15666 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 06:31:45 +0100 (MET) Received: from tomasa (tomasa.reyes.somos.net [10.0.0.11]) by sanson.reyes.somos.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id AAA55790 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:25:03 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from fran@reyes.somos.net) Resent-Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:25:03 -0500 (EST) Resent-Message-Id: <200011100525.AAA55790@sanson.reyes.somos.net> Message-Id: <200011100525.AAA55790@sanson.reyes.somos.net> From: "Francisco Reyes" Resent-From: "Francisco Reyes" To: "Caml List" Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:27:14 -0500 Reply-To: "Francisco Reyes" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 2000 Professional (2.10.2010) For Windows 98 (4.10.2222) In-Reply-To: <200011070015.QAA16361@imap.filemaker.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: practical functional programming books Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr On Mon, 6 Nov 2000 16:21:19 -0800, Hao-yang Wang wrote: >Did you imply that math is not practical? :-) Nope, but I do think that for the average "business/database" programmer math doesn't do all that much. Specially if working with an SQL database AND you are not doing DBA work. >The Functional Approach to Programming is my favorite book on ML! And >Chapter 8 Syntactic Analysis is my favorite chapter. Haven't got to that chapter yet. >However, as its title says, this is a book about programming, and it is not a language >book. I noticed. :-( >Maybe we need a introductory book that (1) starts with examples in text >processing and other "symbolic" stuffs, which nicely shows off caml's >strong points in practical applications; That would be great, although I don't know what kind of market there is for it. After all how many people have even heard of Ocaml or even ML? compared to other languages probably a few small percentage. The main reason this is important is because that is exactly what publishers look at. >using camllex/camlyacc instead of writing our own parsers, etc.). Haven't got to that point yet either. >result will be a practical book that sells lots of copies and promotes >o'caml to lots of new fans, Don't know if it would sell lots of copies, but it would surely make learning the language much easier. francisco Moderator of the Corporate BSD list http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate