From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8407ABC2F for ; Fri, 26 Nov 2004 01:10:46 +0100 (CET) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id iAQ0Akli018005 for ; Fri, 26 Nov 2004 01:10:46 +0100 Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id BAA02560 for ; Fri, 26 Nov 2004 01:10:44 +0100 (MET) Received: from mail.dcs.qmul.ac.uk (vicar.dcs.qmul.ac.uk [138.37.95.146]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id iAQ0AiIB020274 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 26 Nov 2004 01:10:44 +0100 Received: from xenografia.plus.com ([212.159.85.26] helo=[192.168.7.2]) by mail.dcs.qmul.ac.uk with esmtpsa (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.43) id 1CXThD-00040E-3P for caml-list@inria.fr; Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:10:43 +0000 Message-ID: <41A675CC.5050501@dcs.qmul.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:16:12 +0000 From: Martin Berger User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 (X11/20040519) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Experiences with learning OCaml? References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.84.0.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-DCS-Interface-Port: 465 X-DCS-Auth-User: martinb X-DCS-clamav-result: clean (1CXThD-00040E-3P) X-DCS-uvscan-result: clean (1CXThD-00040E-3P) X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 41A67486.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 41A67484.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; dcs:01 qmul:01 caml-list:01 ocaml:01 sicp:01 ocaml:01 beginners:01 untyped:01 checking:01 types:02 seems:03 programming:03 static:03 scheme:04 scheme:04 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.0 (2004-09-13) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.0 X-Spam-Level: i have to disagree. while SICP is a brilliant book that i used to teach myself programming from (and nothing i learned as an undergraduate really went beyond), these days, i'd recommend Ocaml to beginners. scheme has one VERY BIG problem: it is untyped (in the sense of static type checking). thinking about types properly is such an important factor in becoming a good programmer. it seems to me that there is little one can learn from scheme that one couldn't learn from ocaml, and probably learn better. martin