From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by sympa.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 91A497EEEF for ; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:27:17 +0200 (CEST) X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.13,665,1427752800"; d="asc'?scan'208";a="166867106" Received: from charm-ecran.irisa.fr ([131.254.101.83]) by mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/AES128-SHA; 23 Jun 2015 15:27:17 +0200 From: Alan Schmitt To: Philippe Wang Cc: OCaml Mailing List References: Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:27:16 +0200 In-Reply-To: (Philippe Wang's message of "Tue, 23 Jun 2015 01:41:45 +0200") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.5 (darwin) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Subject: Re: [Caml-list] use of ";;" when teaching Ocaml --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, Thanks to everyone for your answers, this has given me much food for thought. On 2015-06-23 01:41, Philippe Wang writes: > 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. I like this approach because it amounts to saying "one always starts a phrase with 'let' or 'type'" (and later in the year there can be 'open', 'module', 'include'). I sure can live without top-level expressions. On the other hand, I also like the idea of terminating phrases, simply because explaining when it terminates is not trivial otherwise, as a 'let' may not be the beginning of a phrase. > 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. I am curious about this. My goal is to teach the language, and I find that a REPL backed with a file works great to do this (using tuareg or ocaml-top). What do you use to make sure students have a fast compile/debug cycle? Thanks again, Alan --=20 OpenPGP Key ID : 040D0A3B4ED2E5C7 Weekly CO=E2=82=82 average (2015-05-30, Mauna Loa Observatory): 403.41 ppm --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBCgAGBQJViV60AAoJEAQNCjtO0uXHFIYIAKBNfCzF1uC3vqga4laE/28e p6uUZb2Vu4hToMnGNmt0aQBivv6cSOBvOj7kviEkIaiKEUPdsyJNp5/Ycbp0d1ox AOQvN0jVF5VkysRabbVFOYU3xq5RceSltVPpet0AAnNgxDM+mUg3C64ZADXkasAX 4BEQ8RBa9AZyHp55l4SkJ6wWJ8SnQbgqZVOxTeB4I5D7oOpR/rqardqA30DqGrWU mct0jyQlK/24BzF1O3VXwP0FSaYhIFvQwqmPWhmrWJa4MEeIVf0zF0ahLP0tdcJk cW7PQqKYH7HAF/gjrzs0M9lQrwIiop/1N9iyFug/SRqk+PHza7HEAookdiUr8oo= =Tyja -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--