[Caml-list] Caml as a first language

[Caml-list] Caml as a first language

[Christophe TROESTLER]

Dear Caml riders,

At my university, we are currently discussing the language to adopt to
teach programming during the first year for mathematicians, computer
scientists, and physicists.  The choice will be among:

* C      (the current one)
* Scheme
* OCaml

To foster our discussion, I would be interested in your EXPERIENCES
both at teaching Caml or at learning it (what is easy, what are the
difficulties, comparisons with other languages, successful
methodology,...).  If some people have notes that are not in the
"Documentation" section of the humps and agree that I take a look, do
not hesitate to send them.  The chosen language will serve a variety
of purposes beyond learning to develop programs : it will be used in
an introduction to numerical methods course (for which scientific
graphics are important), a course on formal methods,...  You can also
offer your comments on that.

As a related note, would some people be interested in "translating" a
book like HtDP (http://www.htdp.org/) to OCaml -- and to set up a web
site for collaborative effort?  Also, there was some talk some time
ago about a DrML environment.  Has that software made any progress?

So as not to clutter the list with this slightly off-topic subject,
please reply to me directly.

Cheers,
ChriS

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