Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity

[Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr>]

> Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:
> >
> > This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no
> > ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use
> > a powerful and theoretically well-founded language.
> 
> Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it
> just has not been written yet?  I personally would like to see an
> ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material
> (in English) is pretty poor IMO.

I tried a lot to figure out what such a book could be; unfortunately I
still don't know.

> > learning Caml is indeed profitable to the way you deal with
> > programming problems, but on the other hand, yes, it is not so easy
> 
> In http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/general-eng.html you said:
> 
> ``Caml is a programming language, easy to learn, easy to use''.
> 
> So is it easy or not easy?
>
> Graham
> 
> http://mobile.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Mobile
> - Check & compose your email via SMS on your Telstra or Vodafone mobile.

Oups! Well spotted :)

Hence, I should be a bit more precise: my feeling is that Caml is easy
to learn (and indeed in some sense, I think it is a true pleasure to
learn Caml). But, as I tried to say in the preceeding message, it is
also mandatory to learn it. In other terms, grasping Caml needs some
efforts from you. It is not difficult or painful but you must do this
effort. So, on the one hand, it is not difficult which means «it's
easy». On the other hand, you have to think and learn some new
concepts; a lot of people consider this kind of activity as hard and
tedious, in a word «difficult»; so that, for them, «it's not so easy».

I hope this is clearer. In some sense the book we should write is not
«Caml for dummies» but something like «Caml for the curious» or «Caml
for the voluntary learners».

Thank you for your interesting feed-back.

Best regards,

Pierre Weis

INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/


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