From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id LAA27656; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:13:32 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA28753 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:13:30 +0100 (MET) Received: from post.kis.ru (post.kis.ru [195.98.32.206]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2EADTf20739 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:13:29 +0100 (MET) Received: from [195.98.54.162] (HELO heaven) by post.kis.ru (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.0.6) with ESMTP id 1922519; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 13:13:28 +0300 From: "MikhailFedotov" To: "'William Lovas'" , "'Oliver Bandel'" Cc: Subject: RE: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 13:13:29 +0300 Message-ID: <003701c2ea12$5bde9560$a917a8c0@merann.ru> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4024 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106 Importance: Normal In-reply-To: <20030313205010.GA7956@force.stwing.upenn.edu> X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 knuth:01 ocaml:01 trivial:01 constructs:02 concrete:02 o'caml:02 complex:03 somewhere:04 motivation:05 grammar:05 practice:06 maybe:06 languages:06 examples:07 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Hi! > You're basic objection here is that O'Caml is not being > taught in the same way that other programming languages have > been taught in the past. Should it be? Maybe O'Caml is > different enough from other programming languages that it > should be *taught* differently. Key word is motivation. First visible results should be instant and appealing in order to keep motivation. Simple programs like "Hello world" are very important to keep motivation high. All those samples ready to cut&paste. As for the good practice, it's about simple tasks among the more complex ones. The good example is "Concrete Mathematics" by D.Knuth with its exercises, from trivial to almost impossible - there is no single boring line. If you forget about motivation to start (simple exersises), then it doesn't really matter how sophiscated the language is by itself. If you forget about motivation to progress (medum-difficulty exersises, real tasks), then the reader will become bored. If you forget about training how to use the language properly for regular tasks (even just truncating the file after specified position), then the reader will get the feeling of beautiful academical language with no practical use. This is also the case if all tasks were trivial and dedicated to learning language constructs. He will also become bored if someone will try to teach him the theory behind the languge when all he wants is to learn to use the language, preferrably by intuition (it is faster) using examples. As a summary: 1. Introduction. 2. Examples. 3. Reference manual with examples somewhere (not just grammar). This is pretty enough... at least it works for me. :) Mikhail ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners