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From: Pierre Weis <pierre.weis@inria.fr>
Message-Id: <200210061808.UAA21367@pauillac.inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] ICFP 2002 programming contest
In-Reply-To: <3d9fad39.226724797@smtp.interaccess.com> from "Thaddeus L. Olczyk" at "Oct 6, 102 03:34:04 am"
To: olczyk@interaccess.com
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 20:08:10 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
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[...]
> There is a book called The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and
> Dave Thomas. One of the things they advise is learning a new
> programming language each year. Some people are trying to formalise
> the process. 
> 
> I have suggested that people use the contest to mark the beginning of
> the Loty ( *L*anguage *o*f *t*he *y*ear ) year. That way you take last
> year's contest as a project to learn the language and at the end of
> year the contest acts as a final exam.
> 
> The language I decided to on this year is OCaml.
[...]

I must warn you that Caml is a bit special: it is known as extremely
addictive. Many people that learnt it seriously, just don't want to
give it up and go back to real programming with *p++ or null pointers ...

You have to consider that before trying Caml: it could very well be
your last attempt to learn a new language.

A better (and more cautious) approach would be to try all other
languages first (it ensures that the process will long for years) and
at the end, last but not least, try Caml :)

All the best for trying to learn Caml!

Pierre Weis

INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://pauillac.inria.fr/~weis/


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