Re: [Caml-list] beginners or not

[Matteo Frigo <athena@fftw.org>]

Mehdi Dogguy <mehdi@dogguy.org> writes:

> Anyone knows who is administrating caml-beginners mailing-list?

The list was started by a gentleman called Ernesto Torresin, whom I know
personally and I have worked together with.  I think he is still running
it.  The last email address I have for him is <stalkern2@tin.it>, which
may or may not be current.  I can reach him through other channels if
necessary.

About ten years ago Ernesto was asked to continue the development of an
application for medical breath analysis that had been written in ocaml
under my supervision.  He had no formal training in computer science or
any other "scientific" discipline, but he soon became fascinated with
Ocaml because he thought it made a lot of sense from the perspective of
a linguist.  He didn't want to waste the time of Xavier and other
important people asking questions about reversing linked lists, and
therefore he started the ocaml-beginners Yahoo group where these
questions could be asked.

I don't have an opinion regarding whether the two lists should be merged
or not.  However, the original ocaml-beginners list was serving a
community of nonspecialists that was much larger than I thought existed.
Here "nonspecialist" means somebody who has never written a program
before, in any language.  Clearly the list was meeting a real need, and
users such as Ernesto should be taken into account in any decision on
this topic.

Regards,
Matteo Frigo