From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@sympa.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@sympa.inria.fr Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by sympa.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E00DE7FB0A for ; Tue, 25 Nov 2014 19:21:58 +0100 (CET) Received-SPF: None (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of john@coherentgraphics.co.uk) identity=pra; client-ip=188.64.184.41; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="john@coherentgraphics.co.uk"; x-sender="john@coherentgraphics.co.uk"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible Received-SPF: None (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of john@coherentgraphics.co.uk) identity=mailfrom; client-ip=188.64.184.41; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="john@coherentgraphics.co.uk"; x-sender="john@coherentgraphics.co.uk"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible Received-SPF: None (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of postmaster@bluechip4.ukhost4u.com) identity=helo; client-ip=188.64.184.41; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="john@coherentgraphics.co.uk"; x-sender="postmaster@bluechip4.ukhost4u.com"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: ApADAB7IdFS8QLgpWWdsb2JhbABbFoJwUlfJKYZLAoEUFgEBAQEBBgEXBw0IQ4QCAQEBAgEBOEAGCwsHEQkWDwkDAgECATEUBohKDQEI0WYBAQEHAQEBAQEBHJEChE0Fl0iIaT+GGIsGiAZ3AQGCSAEBAQ X-IPAS-Result: ApADAB7IdFS8QLgpWWdsb2JhbABbFoJwUlfJKYZLAoEUFgEBAQEBBgEXBw0IQ4QCAQEBAgEBOEAGCwsHEQkWDwkDAgECATEUBohKDQEI0WYBAQEHAQEBAQEBHJEChE0Fl0iIaT+GGIsGiAZ3AQGCSAEBAQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.07,456,1413237600"; d="scan'208";a="109545330" Received: from bluechip4.ukhost4u.com ([188.64.184.41]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 25 Nov 2014 19:21:58 +0100 Received: from [86.26.5.13] (port=61308 helo=[192.168.0.3]) by bluechip4.ukhost4u.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1XtKkQ-002jof-48 for caml-list@inria.fr; Tue, 25 Nov 2014 18:21:58 +0000 Message-ID: <5474C8C4.2010807@coherentgraphics.co.uk> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 18:21:56 +0000 From: John Whitington User-Agent: Postbox 3.0.11 (Macintosh/20140602) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "caml-list@inria.fr" References: <5474AF6B.407@coherentgraphics.co.uk> <5474C87D.4030307@coherentgraphics.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <5474C87D.4030307@coherentgraphics.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - bluechip4.ukhost4u.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - inria.fr X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - coherentgraphics.co.uk X-Get-Message-Sender-Via: bluechip4.ukhost4u.com: authenticated_id: john@coherentgraphics.co.uk Subject: Re: [Caml-list] teaching OCaml Hi, Robert Muller wrote: > Thank you John. I will look at your graphics library, much appreciated. > I didn't require it this first time through but many of my students > bought your book: > > http://www.cs.bc.edu/~muller/teaching/cs110105/f14/lib/html/textbooks.html > > They tell me it is very helpful. > > To me, what is needed to get ML-in-101 off the ground is simplicity: > > 1. a simple implementation/IDE that is trivial to install and "just > works" on macs, Windows (and linux, I suppose), I am thinking of > something like the experience I had in the past with Dr. Java. > 2. a simple, no fuss library for graphics, animation and audio something > like Sedgewick & Wayne's stdlib (http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/code/) > 3. decent error messages for both syntax errors and type errors. > > Ideally, I would prefer that both the IDE and the graphics/audio were > hosted in a brower > much like in Elm (http://elm-lang.org/). Have you seen this? I've not used it but I believe it's related: https://github.com/andrewray/iocaml > I am only dimly aware of other universities teaching ML. I know that > some folks in Denmark are using F#. Do you know if any schools in Europe > are using OCaml in intro courses? Here's a list, to which you can add yourself: http://ocaml.org/learn/teaching-ocaml.html We teach Standard ML at Cambridge, so we have even fewer tools :-) But then we don't do anything graphical. Our first years do ML & Java, so they get plenty of graphical / GUI work with Java. Here's what our ML course looks like (and, basically, has done since 1994): http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1415/FoundsCS/fcs-notes.pdf -- John Whitington Director, Coherent Graphics Ltd http://www.coherentpdf.com/