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 LAA29752; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:36:29 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA29519 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:36:28 +0100 (MET) X-SPAM-Warning: Sending machine is listed in blackholes.five-ten-sg.com Received: from web11008.mail.yahoo.com (web11008.mail.yahoo.com [216.136.131.58]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id h2EAaRX18560 for ; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 11:36:27 +0100 (MET) Message-ID: <20030314103626.84986.qmail@web11008.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [24.189.36.21] by web11008.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 14 Mar 2003 02:36:26 PST Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 02:36:26 -0800 (PST) From: Sergey Goldgaber Subject: Re: [Caml-list] poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book (LONG) To: Noel Welsh , Caml-list In-Reply-To: <20030314095135.84497.qmail@web41204.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Spam: no; 0.00; sergey:99 caml-list:01 introductory:99 noelwelsh:01 dynamically:01 sicp:01 fifteen:99 cookbook:01 hrs:99 haskell:01 ocaml:01 swiss:98 lisp:01 o'caml:02 business:96 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk --- Noel Welsh wrote: > > The PLT people has done a lot of work on teaching > Scheme (think of it as dynamically typed O'Caml ;-) to > beginner programmers. How would you say it compares to the SICP? I've had that highly recommended to me, and bought an old (1986) copy. It seems alright to me, but shares a weaknes (in my eyes) with most OCaml tutorials in that it's heavily math based. That's something that I should have mentioned in my previous email: that the last math class I took must have been fifteen years ago. So tutorials that deal mostly with math are definately a turn off. Someone here mentioned "Programming Perl". The earlier, Perl 4 version, was what I'd consider a tutorial. It wasn't at all math heavy and was very practical. "The Perl Cookbook" is another amazing book that the OCaml community would do well to emulate. It contains tons of cookie-cutter code and explanations to common problems. Sure, it encourages a kind of "paint by numbers" approach to programming, but you really learn a lot by seeing and analyzing the solutions. Anyway, back to the SICP. I'm slowly going through it, and I've actually found 20hrs of videotaped classes by the authors themselves for free download at: http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ which is really great. But the downside is that they use Lisp, and that means that I have to learn yet another language. I've also heard that there are some good books on functional programming that focus on Haskell. But again, that's yet another language. Now, it's probably the case that once I know one functional language others will be easy to pick up. But why should I have to learn two languages if I'm really only going to be focussing on one of them? One of them will likely go to waste (along with the tons of other languages I've already learned). This is why it would be great if the perfect tutorial already existed that focused on OCaml, because that's the language I've chosen. I know it's a lot to ask, and there is already a good deal of good documentation and tutorials out there. But not on the really basic level. So it still remains an issue. --Sergey __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online http://webhosting.yahoo.com ------------------- 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