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--94eb2c093d22e3315f053726fede Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 As John McCarthy said, as far as programming language adoption goes, it doesn't matter what professional programmers think. What matters is what 19 year-olds think. I've been teaching OCaml in my CS101 course for two years now. Students have to choose between my OCaml-based course and the standard one using Python. Getting them to opt for OCaml over the more resume-friendly Python is a bit of a slog. But the ones who go for it wind up really liking the OCaml approach to software and more than a few sign up as CS students because of it. That said, OCaml needs to be much, much easier to use. ocamlfind seems to be a white flag of surrender. Of course the lack of support for pedagogy in the libraries is an issue too. Cheers, Bob Muller On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 5:46 PM, SP wrote: > On Fri, Jul 08, 2016 at 10:40:41AM -0400, Gabriel Scherer wrote: > >> Regarding usability, I think the tooling ecosystem is too complex today. >> If >> I wanted to bootstrap a beginner to do stuff I would have to tell them >> about the OCaml compiler tools (ocamlc, ocamlopt), ocamlfind, a build >> system (omake or ocamlbuild for example), oasis, Merlin, opam, and get >> them >> to learn either Vim or Emacs. >> > > +1 > > To my limited knowledge there is nothing wrong with the capability of > these tools. But making their entry point easier might improve adoption > as well as general usability. > > I would personally be interested in helping someone with a holistic >> approach to usability devote as much of their time as they can. >> > > I'd try to contribute towards that too. > > -- > SP > > > -- > 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 > --94eb2c093d22e3315f053726fede Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
As John McCarthy said, as far as programming language adop= tion goes, it doesn't matter what professional programmers think. What = matters is what 19 year-olds think. I've been teaching OCaml in my CS10= 1 course for two years now. Students have to choose between my OCaml-based = course and the standard one using Python. Getting them to opt for OCaml ove= r the more resume-friendly Python is a bit of a slog. But the ones who go f= or it wind up really liking the OCaml approach to software and more than a = few sign up as CS students because of it.
That said, OCaml needs to be = much, much easier to use. ocamlfind seems to be a white flag of surrender.= =C2=A0 Of course the lack of support for pedagogy in the libraries is an is= sue too.
Cheers,
Bob Muller

<= div class=3D"gmail_extra">
On Fri, Jul 8, 201= 6 at 5:46 PM, SP <sp@orbitalfox.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 08, 2016 at 10:40:41AM -0400= , Gabriel Scherer wrote:
Regarding usability, I think the tooling ecosystem is too complex today. If=
I wanted to bootstrap a beginner to do stuff I would have to tell them
about the OCaml compiler tools (ocamlc, ocamlopt), ocamlfind, a build
system (omake or ocamlbuild for example), oasis, Merlin, opam, and get them=
to learn either Vim or Emacs.

 +1

To my limited knowledge there is nothing wrong with the capability of
these tools. But making their entry point easier might improve adoption
as well as general usability.

I would personally be interested in helping someone with a holistic
approach to usability devote as much of their time as they can.

 I'd try to contribute towards that too.

--
=C2=A0 =C2=A0SP


--
Caml-list mailing list.=C2=A0 Subscription management and archives:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocam= l_beginners
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs

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