Re: Problems to get larger user base ... (Re: [Caml-list] OCaml's variables)

[Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp>]

On 05/28/2013 11:44 AM, oliver wrote:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:17:04AM +0900, Francois Berenger wrote:
>> On 05/27/2013 09:38 PM, Mr. Herr wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 27.05.2013 10:53, schrieb Erik de Castro Lopo:
>>>> Mr. Herr wrote:
>>>>> I think the biggest problem is you generally can only learn FP and/or Ocaml at
>>>>> university, because:
>>>>>
>>>>> The FP terminology is at first (and a long time after starting learning it), without
>>>>> a teacher, not understandable.
>>>> Sorry, that's simply not true.
>>>>
>>>> I studied my last univeristy course in 1992. I picked up Ocaml in 2004
>>>> and Haskell in 2008. Before Ocaml, the only functional language I had
>>>> used was scheme in the late 1980s.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Scheme is terribly functional, so to say, and is absolutely immerged in the Lispy slang.
>>> All your knowlegde in C, Java, PHP, Assembler, Tcl/Tk, Pascal ... will not help you
>>> there.
>>>
>>> I started as an IBM /370 Systems Admin in the late nineties, and it took me months of
>>> reading in 2012
>>> to get some understanding about what the heck the scheme people are talking about.
>>>
>>> Scheme is even a better example for the problems non university learners encounter,
>>> than Ocaml, IMO.
>>
>> A very good book on scheme (which is also quite a deep introduction
>> to computer science if you read the whole thing in fact):
>>
>> "structure and interpretation of computer programs"
>>
>> http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
> [...]
>
> As language introduction it is too much text.
> It is meant as introduction to computer science.

But what an introduction. ;)

> AFAIK scheme was developed for this task.
>
> The scheme standard is not so hard to read, and it has only 50 pages.
> Thats IMHO better if someone looks for a introduction to the language
> only.
>
> For comparison: OCaml ref-man: 554 pages and IMHO not a good starting
> point. IMHO better are some of the introductional books out there,
> e.g. OCaml-Ora-book and jason Hickeys book.
> After that then the Refman.

Honestly, I think "Part I An introduction to OCaml"
from "The OCaml system release 4.00
Documentation and user’s manual"
at
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/
is enough for a start.

I think you can even skip the Objects chapter in there.
And that's only pages 9 to 33 in the PDF version of the document.

Regards,
F.