Re: [Caml-list] Before teaching OCaml

[Jacques GARRIGUE <garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>]

From: David Teller <David.Teller@univ-orleans.fr>
>  I'm going to start teaching OCaml soon and I'm fishing for ideas and
> suggestions. I hope this list is the right place to ask.
[..]
>  I'm planning to base my lecture roughly on part 1 of _Developing
> applications with Objective Caml_, perhaps replacing the chapter devoted
> to Graphics with the use of LablGTK. Then again, perhaps not. Some
> low-level graphics might be interesting for them. I also intend to give
> them a term-long project to work on and develop.
For the graphics, I would rather suggest lablTk. It is much easier to
use for beginners. And you can even work interactively using the
Tk.update command.

> * the environment -- under Windows, is there any viable alternative to
> Emacs + the MinGW-based port ? 

For writing programs, emacs helps a lot. In particular, the possibility
to execute phrases in the toplevel while editing a file makes things
much easier. Emacs looks scary, but for this specific case you only
need a limited number of key combinations :-)
Once you've installed Tcl/Tk (required for LablTk), then you can use
ocamlbrowser. It can be helpful too, particularly for browsing the
library.

(These are very personal suggestions...)

Jacques Garrigue