Re: [Caml-list] how to encourage adoption of OCaml?

[Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

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Well, the world is now much larger than at the time when McCarthy made
that observation. I wouldn't give too much on it, as long as some 19 yr
olds are smart enough to find OCaml (and like it).

That OCaml is not resume-friendly is a myth that still spreads in the
academic world. Actually, it is hard for companies to find OCaml
engineers (it is currently one of our search criteria), and I don't know
anyone who was unemployed for a longer time. I'd guess that the demand
for engineers is bigger than the supply. Of course, this might depend on
where you live, and for what kind of job you go, and getting the first
position in a certain field is never easy.

I don't really get the thing with the white flag...

Gerd

Am Freitag, den 08.07.2016, 18:05 -0400 schrieb Robert Muller:
> As John McCarthy said, as far as programming language adoption goes,
> it doesn't matter what professional programmers think. What matters is
> what 19 year-olds think. I've been teaching OCaml in my CS101 course
> for two years now. Students have to choose between my OCaml-based
> course and the standard one using Python. Getting them to opt for
> OCaml over the more resume-friendly Python is a bit of a slog. But the
> ones who go for it wind up really liking the OCaml approach to
> software and more than a few sign up as CS students because of it.
> That said, OCaml needs to be much, much easier to use. ocamlfind seems
> to be a white flag of surrender.  Of course the lack of support for
> pedagogy in the libraries is an issue too.
> Cheers,
> Bob Muller
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 5:46 PM, SP <sp@orbitalfox.com> wrote:
>         On Fri, Jul 08, 2016 at 10:40:41AM -0400, Gabriel Scherer
>         wrote:
>                 Regarding usability, I think the tooling ecosystem is
>                 too complex today. If
>                 I wanted to bootstrap a beginner to do stuff I would
>                 have to tell them
>                 about the OCaml compiler tools (ocamlc, ocamlopt),
>                 ocamlfind, a build
>                 system (omake or ocamlbuild for example), oasis,
>                 Merlin, opam, and get them
>                 to learn either Vim or Emacs.
>         
>         +1
>         
>         To my limited knowledge there is nothing wrong with the
>         capability of
>         these tools. But making their entry point easier might improve
>         adoption
>         as well as general usability.
>         
>                 I would personally be interested in helping someone
>                 with a holistic
>                 approach to usability devote as much of their time as
>                 they can.
>         
>         I'd try to contribute towards that too.
>         
>         -- 
>            SP
>         
>         
>         
> 
> 
-- 
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Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
My OCaml site:          http://www.camlcity.org
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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