Re: [Caml-list] use of ";;" when teaching Ocaml

[Philippe Wang <mail@philippewang.info>]

In my opinion, it's a lot more relevant to use a very limited and very
simple subset of OCaml when teaching to beginners. And this subset
does not involve expressions at top-level because it's not worth the
trouble.

Writing `42;;` or `print_string "hello";;` does not help: in the best
case scenario, it won't be confusing, but for most people, it will be
one more thing to understand, and there are so many things that are
more interesting to understand.

Also, using the interactive top-level loop is, in my opinion, not good
for beginners. It should only be presented to those who already
understand very well the "core" of OCaml. The most frequent issue with
the top-level loop is that it gets in the way of the notion of
compiling a program, and it might give the false impression that OCaml
can be interpreted.

Well, if all your student are exceptionally intelligent, forget what
I'm saying. My experience, as someone who has taught OCaml to
L2/L3/M1/M2 students (at University Paris 6), is mostly based on
teaching to very various students, all sorts from extremely idiotic to
extremely smart, so I prefer to make every one's work as gainful as
possible, with as little superfluous concepts (including advanced
topics that don't look like advanced topics to people who are very
used to using OCaml) as I possibly can. On the other hand, if your
students are not exceptionally smart, I really believe you should act
as ;; simply didn't exist in OCaml (the smartest ones will discover ;;
by themselves, or you might want to show it just to them, and learn to
use it efficiently by themselves too).

Philippe Wang

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Alan Schmitt
<alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> In my Ocaml class, I tend to promote the use of ";;" to separate phrases
> (I'm basically following
> http://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/structure_of_ocaml_programs.html#Usingandomittingand
> although I was not aware of this page when I created the course). My
> motivation is to minimize the difference between using the top-level and
> writing files.
>
> I am now wondering if this is a good practice. In a nutshell, would you
> rather use
>
> #+begin_src ocaml
> let x = 12;;
> print_endline "Hello World!"
> #+end_src
>
> or
>
> #+begin_src ocaml
> let x = 12
> let () = print_endline "Hello World!"
> #+end_src
>
> when teaching Ocaml?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Alan
>