Re: [Caml-list] try ocaml website

[oliver <oliver@first.in-berlin.de>]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 07:00:20PM +0100, Fabrice Le Fessant wrote:
> Dear ocamllers,
> 
>   We worked hard on our "Try OCaml" website, started by Çagdas, and we
> managed to improve it enough, so that we think people can start using it
> (and hopefully, improving it).
> 
> It is available here:
> 
> http://try.ocamlpro.com/
[...]


Hey, toplevel as shellwindow in the broswer.

I like it. :-)

The black background makes it also looking seriously.

I didn't looked at the lessons in detail,
just typing in some code by myself and clicking
on some  of the examples.

Just to have a web-based trial of Ocaml is a good thing.
So people can try around before they decide to install it.

But if this is planned as a course, when the first paragraph mentions
that "OCaml is a strongly typed functional language.", then
additionally to working examples it might also make sense to show
examples, where types mismatch, so that people can see, what meaning it has
if the types do conflict.

And an explanation of the advantages might also be good, because
most people prefer the convenience of automatic coercion over the
annoyance of a picky typesystem, when they decide to use a language.

Maybe something like commenting boxes could be added, which
explain the advantages/disadvantages of some certain properties
of the language and someting like a "background box", which explains
for example some conecptual issues of either functional programming,
like referential transparency, or some background on the type system.
Or for explaining design decisions of OCaml, for example the motivation
for mutable strings, as opposed to functional, as in other functional
languages (and tips&tricks how to make a functional implementation, just to
show, it could be done).


[...]
>   As the engine is translated from OCaml to Javascript by js_of_ocaml,
> you can even play with it offline, when you are disconnected.
[...]

js_of_ocaml ??

Hey, didn't knew that.

If it works fine, then it is a big, big pro to OCaml,
compared to some other languages which are used often for
web-development (like Python, Perl and so on).

From the js_of_ocaml page it looks like it's based on Ocsigen.
Maybe it's time to explore it. :-)

This all looks promising!

Maybe webprogramming can turn from ugly annoyance into a pleasure
this way....


Ciao,
   Oliver