Re: [Caml-list] new user - old questions

[Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp>]

On 12/25/2012 02:59 AM, Siraaj Khandkar wrote:
> +1 for OCaml.org! It is an excellent organization of available OCaml resources
> that I wish existed when I started checking-out OCaml.
>
>
> SHORT VERSION:
>
> Editor:
>      Vim with OMlet plugin
>
> Books:
>      1) Jason Hickey's "Introduction to Objective Caml"
>      2) The manual: http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/

There is also this quite thorough book:
"Developing Applications With Objective Caml"
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/html/index.html

I just wish the book would have some example of an Error monad.
I mean, something advanced you don't find in a lot of other languages.
This book is OK even for complete beginners, in my opinion.

> Syntax:
>      I actually preferred OCaml's syntax over Haskell's from the start (meaning
>      that I don't just prefer OCaml because of familiarity). It is highly
>      subjective and I don't care to argue about it, but, to me it just feels
>      simpler, more uniform and (gasp) clean. :) Though honestly, cleanliness
>      primarily comes down to the author's deliberate effort.
>
>
> LONG VERSION:
>
> I started by reading/skimming beginning chapters of Jason Hickey's book, and
> then just committing to writing in OCaml, every small utility that I had a need
> for while looking things up in the manual and stdlib reference. So lots of head
> banging and RTFMing, the best way, IMHO :)
>
> That is for "how to do it" aspect of things, but another, IMHO most
> enlightening, aspect is "how to think" in OCaml (or ML in general), and for
> that I highly recommend reading Jane Street's blog, with the most important
> entry point (IMHO, of course) being the Effective ML talk:
> https://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/82
>
> I'm yet to switch to their standard library (though I plan to), but just about
> everything I've read from these guys so far, have been most moving to me as a
> programmer in general, with OCaml just being an excellent facilitator of such
> thinking.
>
> Another thing I have an opinion on is the build system. The "right" way to
> compile and link your programs have been quite confusing to me as a beginner. I
> was told to "just use OASIS", and I remember wasting quite a lot of time trying
> to grok everything it does without understanding OCaml first. I finally (and
> rightfully) decided to just write Makefiles with "manual" build steps as is
> described in the manual, which helped me to understand how things are actually
> put together.
>
> I just switched to ocamlbuild, and can now fully appreciate what it has to
> offer!  I plan to go to OASIS eventually, but haven't quite developed an
> understanding of what it would gain me (plus I noticed some behaviors that rub
> me the wrong way).  Seems like distributing libraries is it, but I'm not quite
> there yet, so time will tell.
>
> For managing external libraries, my initial savior was GODI - I had some issues
> with packages breaking, but I don't know what I would've done without it - it
> is awesome!  However, as of a couple of months ago, there's now a much improved
> package manager for OCaml - OPAM. I now use OPAM exclusively.
>
> As for editors, I'm a happy Vim user, with OMlet plugin:
> http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~dbaelde/productions/omlet.html
>
> So, my subjective and personally-inspired roadmap is such:
>
> * Get inspired by Effective ML
> * Get a feel for the language from Jason Hickey's book
> * Use OPAM
> * Write Makefiles with manual steps (see the official manual)
> * Hack, hack, hack!
> * Watch, and this time understand, Effective ML again
> * Switch to ocamlbuild
> * Go forth and conquer! :)
>
>
> P.S. For the experienced Camlers, I am not claiming to be "right" in anything I
> said, it is simply a description of my perception as a new comer to the
> language.
>
>
>
> On Dec 24, 2012, at 7:38 AM, Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Check ocaml.org, there are tutorials, references, and book suggestions. I
>> bootstrapped myself with a tutorial, then read through language spec. Ocaml
>> is thankfully not a complicated language to get productive with.
>>
>> /M
>> On Dec 24, 2012 1:30 PM, "Gour" <gour@atmarama.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> Some years ago I was looking for adequate language for one open-source
>>> project to be done in free time and although I took a look at OCaml,
>>> somehow, I didn't like syntax and went playing with Haskell.
>>>
>>> Never really grokked monads and had feeling that despite nice syntax,
>>> some things are more complicated for pragmatic programming than they
>>> should be.
>>>
>>> I managed to scare enough few potential contributors and had to
>>> postpone the project for 'sometime in the future'.
>>>
>>> Later, I was exploring D (v2), but it seems that the language is never
>>> finished, code breaks often from one version to another, poor GUI
>>> bindings support etc.
>>>
>>> Shortly thought about using Python+Cython, but dynamic language never
>>> sounded right for my project.
>>>
>>> In utter despair I went to evaluate Ada which seems as nice (a bit
>>> verbose) language, mature, actively developed, good ecosystem, but
>>> somehow I was missing lack of FP features.
>>>
>>> For a short time I took a look at Nimrod - nice & interesting language,
>>> but very small community and lack of FP features.
>>>
>>> Then, I do not know exactly how, I got inspired to take a look at OCaml
>>> and in a very short time, I could see that there is a language with
>>> quite OK syntax, actively developed, not small community enabling me to
>>> use FP language with thinking too much about monads and category theory
>>> in order to do practical things.
>>>
>>> The remaining thing is to get hints how to proceed, iow.:
>>>
>>> a) Real World Ocaml is going to be released in Oct 2013, so I wonder is
>>> there any online/paperback book you can recommend? I'm on Debian wheezy
>>> which means no 4.0 yet, but probably we'll try to take advantage of new
>>> features in due course of time
>>>
>>> b) it looks that Emacs is the best-supported editor for OCaml. How is
>>> support in Vim/Geany? What do you recommend?
>>>
>>> Now I wonder about Typerex which looks cool, but I was told on #ocaml
>>> that it's "dead project" and was recommended to use tuareg mode?
>>>
>>> That's actually everything or most important...editor & good book to
>>> start with?
>>>
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Gour
>>>
>