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Folks, is second ppx-based edition of RWO being considered by original auth= ors? Kakadu On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Dean Thompson wrote: > A few years ago, with over 30 years of programming experience including 1= 5 years primarily in Java, I decided I needed a new =E2=80=9Chome=E2=80=9D = programming language. I then spent a frustrating few years studying what=E2= =80=99s out there. I have felt like a man without a country. I developed fa= irly serious crushes on Scala and then on Haskell, but after a few serious = dates with them I moved on. I have read deeply about many, many more. > > I have converged on OCaml. It is a beautiful language and a highly practi= cal functional language. Although infrastructure such as compilers, editor/= IDE support, and libraries are on the minimal side, the essentials are all = there and are lovingly maintained. Although the community is small, it is s= mart, friendly, and engaged. Some amazing technology is available or work-i= n-progress (such as js_of_ocaml and Mirage). > > But this feels like a fragile new home unless we can build a bigger commu= nity! For one thing, if our community shrinks much, it may no longer be via= ble. Also, while I love 1,000 packages on opam, I want 100,000! > > As a newcomer to the community, I have to say that there are daunting bar= riers to a potential new user considering OCaml for a new project. If you l= ike starting on a new programming language with a book, as I do, you likely= start with Real World OCaml. That book is very inspiring! But then when yo= u try to move from RWO to, well, using OCaml in the real world, you discove= r that there is no consensus on Core as a standard library, and that Camlp4= is deprecated. > > It appears to me that if, instead, you come to OCaml as a potential new u= ser through ocaml.org, there are other barriers. It is hard for me to judge= because I came through RWO, but it appears to me that the lack of consensu= s on standard library comes up pretty quickly. I=E2=80=99m more of a langua= ge manual guy than a tutorial guy, so I quickly notice that, although the O= Caml language manual is well written, has a lovely introductory flow, and h= as great examples, it fairly quickly gets into terse description of languag= e constructs while providing limited help to a beginner in developing intui= tion for the language as a whole and how best to use it. > > This is one man=E2=80=99s experience and one man=E2=80=99s opinions. Do o= thers on this list feel the ramp to OCaml adoption is smoother than my impr= ession suggests? Who here is excited about making OCaml approachable to new= comers? Where is the main ongoing work on this? Who are the main leaders fr= om this perspective? > > Dean > -------- > Dean Thompson > http://www.linkedin.com/in/deansthompson/ > > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs