On 05/29/2013 11:39 AM, Jeff Meister wrote:Maybe this one then:
I hesitate to recommend Part I of the OCaml Manual as an introduction
for new users because it is so terse and dense. It describes the core
language on a single HTML page. Powerful features of great consequence
are covered rapidly. For example, variant types are relegated to a
single section with only three example types.
I do not mean to complain about the OCaml Manual; its succinctness is a
virtue. It assumes I am competent and does not waste my time. Nearly
every sentence in Part I conveys vital information and should be read
carefully. But people are not used to engaging with tutorials in this
manner. They expect motivation (explanation of the reasoning behind
various features) and hand-holding, which they can skip over or consult
depending on their level of understanding. Ideally, they want to see an
example that does something similar to whatever they're currently
working on.
Most people actively involved in the OCaml community right now have
either read the language reference (i.e., Part II) or are capable of
doing so if they wanted to. Many of them have substantial background in
programming language theory. But the majority of programmers cannot
learn the language in this way. I think appealing to them requires a
more didactic method.
http://try.ocamlpro.com/
;)
On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 8:40 PM, Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp<mailto:berenger@riken.jp>> wrote:Am 27.05.2013 10 <tel:27.05.2013%2010>:53, schrieb Erik
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:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/__full-text/book/book.html
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://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/__manual-ocaml/
<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"
athttps://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/__arc/caml-list
<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.
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