From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pBGJN53L016302 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:23:05 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AmACAIyZ605UXebjm2dsb2JhbABEhQyWDJA8IgEBAQEBCAkLCRQlgXIBAQUIAhkFQwMXAQMCCREEAQEDAgkaAwICGSwBCQgCBAESCwUCh2oGpjGRWIEvgkqGdYEWBIx9Kpl7 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,364,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="123698587" Received: from avasout01.plus.net ([84.93.230.227]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 16 Dec 2011 20:22:59 +0100 Received: from WinEight ([87.113.29.166]) by avasout01 with smtp id 9vNx1i0093b2Y3b01vNyuM; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:22:59 +0000 X-CM-Score: 0.00 X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.0 cv=J8QoHXbS c=1 sm=1 a=0zEG4qygSunlUYhn/AKXGg==:17 a=4HJ7mtWpFEsA:10 a=Xub9RBUEA-sA:10 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=cR95hNCDAAAA:8 a=jM9pu8wBAAAA:8 a=ZOzjf2MOAAAA:8 a=CjxXgO3LAAAA:8 a=Mjm3aAg1nEj5763csDkA:9 a=CfTuuUe1cam_R0XRxuQA:7 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10 a=ARFMmKMt6-MA:10 a=nxyw_9Wr-ZoA:10 a=0zEG4qygSunlUYhn/AKXGg==:117 From: "Jon Harrop" To: "'Andrej Bauer'" , References: In-Reply-To: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:22:20 -0000 Message-ID: <00d101ccbc28$09440c30$1bcc2490$@ffconsultancy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AQJ9DcfSKO8zB7mDyWBbyruz7RAC15R+NA9w Content-Language: en-gb Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by walapai.inria.fr id pBGJN53L016302 Subject: RE: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user 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