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 KAA18894; Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:46 +0200 (MET DST) 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 KAA18890 for ; Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:45 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f6A8Zfb28450; Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:41 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA18886; Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:40 +0200 (MET DST) From: Pierre Weis Message-Id: <200107100835.KAA18886@pauillac.inria.fr> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] language story on slashdot In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010709031704.04188ec0@shell16.ba.best.com> from Chris Hecker at "Jul 9, 101 03:33:47 am" To: checker@d6.com (Chris Hecker) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:35:40 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: leary@nwlink.com, caml-list@inria.fr X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Hi, > >Some good mentions of OCaml; perhaps a good place for more? :) > > Can I just ask the somewhat obvious question of whether the slashdot > crowd is the kind of new OCaml users we want to be attracting at > this point? I don't mean to be elitist (seriously), and I just > discovered caml a while back myself so I really have no business > expressing an opinion here (that won't stop me :), but having a slew > of flavor-of-the-month pseudo-programmers flood this list is not my > idea of a good time. I think this would not be a so hard problem: we would just have to abandon this mailing list to pseudo-programmers and start a new Caml mailing list on another INRIA's machine! Anyway, such a flood would be great for our group and INRIA, even if it is not that interesting for ``real'' Caml programmers and implementors as you mentioned it... > I just tried to access the Great Computer > Language Shootout a couple days ago to download some sample code to > help a friend learn OCaml, but it was slashdotted into oblivion and > had been for over a week. Hey dear, don't run after the pseudo-programmers crowds like that! If you want to get good examples of elementary Caml code, there is a (presumably) much more relevant adress available: http://pauillac.inria.fr/caml/Examples/oc/basics/eng.html In addition, you would help us if you can add something or criticize this set of examples when helping your friend to learn Caml ! > This is a simple example of how more > attention is not necessarily a good thing (it's back up now, but you > can read Doug Bagley's opinion on the matter, and how he would > rather have not been linked on slashdot, at > http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/slashhole.shtml). You're right; however, we would be glad if people would have a look to our well connected WEB site to find information about Caml, instead of trying desesperately to connect to Doug Bagley's one ... > People who are interested in trying new languages will discover > OCaml on their own (like I and others did), and then will be > motivated to approach it in a thoughtful and respectful manner > because it's good, not because it's hip and CmdrTaco says he's going > to look into it. Hope this will happen exactly as you describe it :) > Of course, if the Inria folks want to increase the visibility of > OCaml in general, and think slashdot is a viable platform for this, > then I'll defer and shut up. We have ambiguous feelings on this point: we need outside visibility to enforce our inside-INRIA visibility and funding; on the other hand we are not equipped to face flood and need calm to implement hard stuff such as generic functions and mu-rule ... > Chris > > > ------------------- > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ > To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Thank you for your constructuve contribution. Pierre Weis INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/ ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr