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 DAA07206; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 03:15:23 +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 DAA06985 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 03:15:21 +0100 (MET) Received: from nexus.stwing.upenn.edu (NEXUS.STWING.UPENN.EDU [165.123.132.61]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2D2FKf09700 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 03:15:20 +0100 (MET) Received: from force.stwing.upenn.edu (daemon@force.stwing.upenn.edu [165.123.132.65]) by nexus.stwing.upenn.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h2D2FIBD013689 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK) for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:15:19 -0500 (EST) Received: (from wlovas@localhost) by force.stwing.upenn.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) id h2D2FIvE029608 for caml-list@inria.fr; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:15:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:15:17 -0500 From: William Lovas To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity Message-ID: <20030313021517.GA29102@force.stwing.upenn.edu> Mail-Followup-To: caml-list@inria.fr References: <200303111023.LAA09578@pauillac.inria.fr> <20030311190230.13615.qmail@web10304.mail.yahoo.com> <20030312171242.GA11435@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030312171242.GA11435@redhat.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Spam: no; 0.00; lovas:01 wlovas:01 stwing:01 caml-list:01 introductory:99 higher-order:01 real-world:01 o'caml's:01 ocaml:01 caml:01 mainstream:01 o'caml:02 wrote:03 interface:03 perl:03 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 05:12:43PM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 08:02:30AM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote: > > Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it > > just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an > > ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material > > (in English) is pretty poor IMO. > > Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There > is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml. What about the O'Reilly book, "Developing Applications With Objective Caml"? It's not perfect yet, but the preliminary translation from the French is available at: http://caml.inria.fr/oreilly-book/html/index.html Is this the sort of thing you're looking for? > And please don't start by telling me about the lambda calculus or > higher-order functions. The O'Reilly book starts in Chapter 2 with the basics of functional programming. This makes sense because that's really what sets O'Caml apart from other more mainstream languages. > Start by telling me how to read and write files. Chapter 3 goes into the imperative aspects, including I/O. > How to draw a nice picture Chapter 5: The Graphics Interface. > Go on to tell me how to access my SQL database from an > OCaml application server. Not quite -- but Chapter 6 has several example applications, including one that models a simple database. The rest of the book has a very practical feel to it, constantly grounding itself in real-world examples and applications. Like i said, it's not quite ideal at this point, but i'm surprised nobody's mentioned it yet. Would it help O'Caml's cause, do you think, if O'Reilly were to polish this up and publish it? cheers, William ------------------- 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