Re: [Caml-list] teaching OCaml

[Drup <drupyog+caml@zoho.com>]

There are custom toplevels for js_of_ocaml where you can experiment with 
reactive and interactive features, a bit like Elm's "IDE".

See https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml#toplevel and 
http://ocsigen.github.io/js_of_ocaml/#version=4.02.0
The source code is [here][1] and should be quite easy to modify if you 
want to add a library (or modify the UI to make the drawing area bigger).

[1]: https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml/tree/master/toplevel

Le 25/11/2014 19:21, John Whitington a écrit :
> 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
>