[Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Andrej Bauer]

Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation
are very welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for
the users, who care just about one thing: to have a click & install
distribution of Ocaml that actually works.

Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and
they never heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command
prompt.

It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter
what is under the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks
about it, much less so what Linux people think about it (I am typing
this on a Linux box). Someone just needs to do it, and Jonathan
Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you have the time
to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e., it
contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just
sticks it under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of
whether there already is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will
be received very positively by many people, even though "the experts"
will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way,
etc. Just do it.

Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for
flexdll, etc.

The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students,
but I can't because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me
_anything_ that actually works. Otherwise I will keep teaching
"functional programming" with Mathematica...

That's my opinion.

With kind regards,

Andrej

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Jonathan Protzenko]

Hi Andrej,

I would gladly welcome any patch for my ocaml-installer that allows one 
to build the self-contained environment you describe. Some people seem 
to have volunteered to help out; let them be assured that I will gladly 
review any patch they send.

I'm just afraid it's a big task to do so, which is why I haven't 
tackled this earlier (I could easily see myself spending the whole week 
on it).

There's also http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=0005392 that could 
be improved with the ocaml installer. Any patches for that are welcome, 
too.

Just for reference, the project lives on github 
<https://github.com/protz/ocaml-installer>.

Cheers,

jonathan

On Thu 15 Dec 2011 08:29:53 AM CET, Andrej Bauer wrote:
> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation
> are very welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for
> the users, who care just about one thing: to have a click&  install
> distribution of Ocaml that actually works.
>
> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and
> they never heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command
> prompt.
>
> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter
> what is under the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks
> about it, much less so what Linux people think about it (I am typing
> this on a Linux box). Someone just needs to do it, and Jonathan
> Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you have the time
> to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e., it
> contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just
> sticks it under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of
> whether there already is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will
> be received very positively by many people, even though "the experts"
> will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way,
> etc. Just do it.
>
> Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
> strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for
> flexdll, etc.
>
> The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students,
> but I can't because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me
> _anything_ that actually works. Otherwise I will keep teaching
> "functional programming" with Mathematica...
>
> That's my opinion.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Andrej
>

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Martin DeMello]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:29 PM, Andrej Bauer <andrej.bauer@andrej.com> wrote:
> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation
> are very welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for
> the users, who care just about one thing: to have a click & install
> distribution of Ocaml that actually works.
>
> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and
> they never heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command
> prompt.
>
> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter
> what is under the hood.

There's another use case for a good OCaml-on-windows - people who want
to write once and deploy everywhere. For that, it matters very much if
the distribution is incomplete.

I agree that a nice, beginner-friendly package would be a plus,
though, ideally combined with a lightweight ide that is preconfigured
to find the compiler in the same place that the installer puts it.

martin

RE: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Jon Harrop]

Wouldn't it be preferable for students to use OCaml in a browser? I'm just teaching a bunch of people F# and I've recommended tryfsharp.org to them for that reason. Perhaps it would be better to build something comparable in the OCaml world, rather than starting down the arduous route of an easy-to-install optimizing native code compiler?

Cheers,
Jon.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrej Bauer [mailto:andrej.bauer@andrej.com]
> Sent: 15 December 2011 07:30
> To: caml-list@inria.fr
> Subject: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user
> 
> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation are very
> welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for the users, who care
> just about one thing: to have a click & install distribution of Ocaml that actually
> works.
> 
> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and they never
> heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command prompt.
> 
> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter what is under
> the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks about it, much less so what
> Linux people think about it (I am typing this on a Linux box). Someone just needs
> to do it, and Jonathan Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you
> have the time to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e.,
> it contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just sticks it
> under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of whether there already
> is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will be received very positively by many
> people, even though "the experts"
> will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way, etc. Just do it.
> 
> Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
> strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for flexdll, etc.
> 
> The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students, but I can't
> because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me _anything_ that actually
> works. Otherwise I will keep teaching "functional programming" with
> Mathematica...
> 
> That's my opinion.
> 
> With kind regards,
> 
> Andrej
> 
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Andrej Bauer]

That's a good idea, actually, because the barrier to entry is 0. I
could even run my own server. Wasn't there a javascript implementation
of the ocaml toplevel? It should be possible to upload/download files,
though.

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be preferable for students to use OCaml in a browser? I'm just teaching a bunch of people F# and I've recommended tryfsharp.org to them for that reason. Perhaps it would be better to build something comparable in the OCaml world, rather than starting down the arduous route of an easy-to-install optimizing native code compiler?
>
> Cheers,
> Jon.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Andrej Bauer [mailto:andrej.bauer@andrej.com]
>> Sent: 15 December 2011 07:30
>> To: caml-list@inria.fr
>> Subject: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user
>>
>> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation are very
>> welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for the users, who care
>> just about one thing: to have a click & install distribution of Ocaml that actually
>> works.
>>
>> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and they never
>> heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command prompt.
>>
>> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter what is under
>> the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks about it, much less so what
>> Linux people think about it (I am typing this on a Linux box). Someone just needs
>> to do it, and Jonathan Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you
>> have the time to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e.,
>> it contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just sticks it
>> under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of whether there already
>> is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will be received very positively by many
>> people, even though "the experts"
>> will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way, etc. Just do it.
>>
>> Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
>> strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for flexdll, etc.
>>
>> The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students, but I can't
>> because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me _anything_ that actually
>> works. Otherwise I will keep teaching "functional programming" with
>> Mathematica...
>>
>> That's my opinion.
>>
>> With kind regards,
>>
>> Andrej
>>
>> --
>> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
>> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
>> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
>> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Andrej Bauer]

Here it is:

http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html

How many bells & whistles would we have to make a "try it" web page? A
pretty CSS, a bit of javascrip to avoid submitting forms, and it could
look like an actual toplevel.

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Thomas Gazagnaire]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 681 bytes --]

> http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html
> 
> How many bells & whistles would we have to make a "try it" web page? A
> pretty CSS, a bit of javascrip to avoid submitting forms, and it could
> look like an actual toplevel.
> 

Çagdas Bozman has just started a similar project:

https://github.com/cago/tryocaml
http://bozman.cagdas.free.fr/tryocaml/

It's still work in progress, though.

--
Thomas


> -- 
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> 


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Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Paolo Donadeo]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 21:12, Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com> wrote:
> Çagdas Bozman has just started a similar project:
> https://github.com/cago/tryocaml
> http://bozman.cagdas.free.fr/tryocaml/

Very nice work!


-- 
Paolo

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Hezekiah M. Carty]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Andrej Bauer <andrej.bauer@andrej.com> wrote:
> Here it is:
>
> http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html
>

Another using the Cadmium (http://cadmium.x9c.fr/):

http://ocamljava.x9c.fr/toplevel/toplevel.html

Hez

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Fabrice Le Fessant]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 518 bytes --]

Cagdas Bozman is already working on a "tryocaml" website, I will ask him
if he can make a public repository for it on github. I think he based
his work on js_of_ocaml toplevel, with a few enhancements.

--Fabrice

On 12/16/2011 09:02 PM, Andrej Bauer wrote:
> Here it is:
> 
> http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html
> 
> How many bells & whistles would we have to make a "try it" web page? A
> pretty CSS, a bit of javascrip to avoid submitting forms, and it could
> look like an actual toplevel.
> 

[-- Attachment #2: fabrice_le_fessant.vcf --]
[-- Type: text/x-vcard, Size: 393 bytes --]

begin:vcard
fn:Fabrice LE FESSANT
n:LE FESSANT;Fabrice
org:INRIA Saclay -- Ile-de-France;P2P & OCaml
adr;quoted-printable:;;Parc Orsay Universit=C3=A9 ;Orsay CEDEX;;91893;France
email;internet:fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr
title;quoted-printable:Charg=C3=A9 de Recherche
tel;work:+33 1 74 85 42 14
tel;fax:+33 1 74 85 42 49 
url:http://fabrice.lefessant.net/
version:2.1
end:vcard

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Çagdas Bozman]

> How many bells & whistles would we have to make a "try it" web page? A
> pretty CSS, a bit of javascrip to avoid submitting forms, and it could
> look like an actual toplevel.

Like Thomas and Fabrice said, I am currently working on a "Try it" web
page. I am using Jérôme Vouillon's toplevel [1] and try to make it more
user friendly with pretty CSS :-)
The main goal is to let new users and beginners to try OCaml without
installing anything and with some exercises/lessons/tutorials.

I have a git repository on [2].

[1] http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html
[2] https://github.com/cago/tryocaml

-- 
Çagdas Bozman <cagdas.bozman@ocamlpro.com>

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Pierre-Alexandre Voye]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 969 bytes --]

Maybe you could use Jérome Diminio's utop, which provide automatic
completion in the top level. The great difficulty is just to adapt ncurses
to javascript..

Le 18 déc. 2011 15:43, "Çagdas Bozman" <cagdas.bozman@ocamlpro.com> a
écrit :

> How many bells & whistles would we have to make a "try it" web page? A
> pretty CSS, a bit of java...
Like Thomas and Fabrice said, I am currently working on a "Try it" web
page. I am using Jérôme Vouillon's toplevel [1] and try to make it more
user friendly with pretty CSS :-)
The main goal is to let new users and beginners to try OCaml without
installing anything and with some exercises/lessons/tutorials.

I have a git repository on [2].

[1] http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html
[2] https://github.com/cago/tryocaml

--
Çagdas Bozman <cagdas.bozman@ocamlpro.com>



-- 
Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives:
https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/...

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1537 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Jérémie Dimino]

Le dimanche 18 décembre 2011 à 21:26 +0100, Pierre-Alexandre Voye a
écrit :
> Maybe you could use Jérome Diminio's utop, which provide automatic
> completion in the top level. The great difficulty is just to adapt
> ncurses to javascript..

Do not try to adapt ncurses to javascript... By the way UTop does not
use ncurses, it uses lambda-term which is written in OCaml and also
works on Windows.

But the completion module does not need it. It only requires compiler
libraries. Currently it is an internal module, but if anybody want to
use it i can create a small independent library for it, just ask me.

-- 
Jérémie

PS: it is *Jérémie* Dimino ;-)

Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Roberto Di Cosmo]

Js_of_OCaml is your friend, see

  http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/manual/

The online demo is not working for me (stuck in a terminal airport),
but I have seen it several times working on Jerome's browser, and
it's quite cool

--Roberto


http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/files/toplevel/index.html

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 08:56:37PM +0100, Andrej Bauer wrote:
> That's a good idea, actually, because the barrier to entry is 0. I
> could even run my own server. Wasn't there a javascript implementation
> of the ocaml toplevel? It should be possible to upload/download files,
> though.
> 
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> > Wouldn't it be preferable for students to use OCaml in a browser? I'm just teaching a bunch of people F# and I've recommended tryfsharp.org to them for that reason. Perhaps it would be better to build something comparable in the OCaml world, rather than starting down the arduous route of an easy-to-install optimizing native code compiler?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jon.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Andrej Bauer [mailto:andrej.bauer@andrej.com]
> >> Sent: 15 December 2011 07:30
> >> To: caml-list@inria.fr
> >> Subject: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user
> >>
> >> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation are very
> >> welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for the users, who care
> >> just about one thing: to have a click & install distribution of Ocaml that actually
> >> works.
> >>
> >> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and they never
> >> heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command prompt.
> >>
> >> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter what is under
> >> the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks about it, much less so what
> >> Linux people think about it (I am typing this on a Linux box). Someone just needs
> >> to do it, and Jonathan Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you
> >> have the time to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e.,
> >> it contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just sticks it
> >> under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of whether there already
> >> is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will be received very positively by many
> >> people, even though "the experts"
> >> will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way, etc. Just do it.
> >>
> >> Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
> >> strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for flexdll, etc.
> >>
> >> The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students, but I can't
> >> because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me _anything_ that actually
> >> works. Otherwise I will keep teaching "functional programming" with
> >> Mathematica...
> >>
> >> That's my opinion.
> >>
> >> With kind regards,
> >>
> >> Andrej
> >>
> >> --
> >> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> >> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> >> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> >> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> 

-- 
--Roberto Di Cosmo
 
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