> Are beginners even welcome? Yes, beginners are warmly welcome. Feel free to keep pointing out changes that would help answer this question, this is helpful. Of course small-scope changes (fixing library X to support format Y) are always much easier to actuate than general recommendations (more libraries). > Is anyone in charge of the OCaml ecosystem? No, there is no one in charge of the OCaml ecosystem, or of a general "OCaml experience". This may explain some of the very real usability issues, but it is also rather unclear to me how this should be fixed. Would anyone volunteer for such a role (funded how?), and to do what? I agree with your conclusion that the OCaml ecosystem today is unforgiving, and that it is particularly harsh on non-accompanied beginners. How could this state of affairs be improved? I think that while a unified vision for the ecosystem may be necessary to fix some of the usability issues (one problem with unification is that you need people to agree on it), a large part of the problem is rather of the "death by thousand cuts" kind: small things that add up to create an overall unpleasant experience. This portion of the general problem is both too large for a single person to fix (no one person can guess all use-cases), it is easily amenable to crowd-fixing: reporting and/or fixing issues one at a time as you discover them. So please keep doing that! On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:13 AM, Hendrik Boom wrote: > On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 08:08:35PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote: > > And in case anyone wonders, I haven't given up. I will continue trying > to use OCaml becuse it seems to be the right kind of tool. Not everyone > will be so stubborn, > > -- hendrik. > > > # Is anyone in charge of the OCaml ecosystem? > > > > I am a beginner to OCaml. I'm not a beginner to the functional style of > programmins, nor to sophisticated type systems, nor to computing in > general. I started programming in 1963, was involved with Algol 68, Lisp, > and constructive type theory. I've managed to get code running in the days > when you had to enter it as numbers; the machine I used then wouldn't even > type letters other than u, v, w, x, y, z (its version of hexadecimal). In > those days what you needed to know was the instruction set and its > encoding. Everything followed from that. > > > > Believe be, I appreciate every advantage high-level languages have to > offer. > > > > With this background, you'd expect I'd take to OCaml like a duck to > water. > > > > Wrong. > > > > The language itself is actually usable. Once you figure out how the > syntax works and where to put the brackets. > > > > But the world has changed since source code was in hexadecimal. > > > > ## Libraries > > > > Nowdays, software rests on a huge inventory of libaries and tools. A > language, however elegant, isn't very usable for anything very practical > without its libraries and their documentation. It's not enough to know the > machine inside out. > > > > That's the hurdle I face whenever I program in OCaml -- figuring out > which libraries are usable, and which are actually documented. Not > documented in the sense that someone has written an API guide and a > tutorial, but documented in the sense that it is actually possible to find > them. > > > > There are often multiple packages to accomplish a single task. > > > > You don't know which one to use. You try the obvious one, have trouble, > ask about it, and then be told, No, that one is troubled, you should use > this other one instead. The one you can download from *this* site. So you > do, You download it. You figure out how to edit the Makefile so that it > generates the right package files. The options you need are actually > documented in the Makefile. > > > > I had to compile my own from the original Makefile, using the options > that are indeed documented inside it.XXX > > > > I've actually manged to write a trivial 3D videogame once I was pointed > to the usable OpenGL library. The one where the function names were > closely related to the ones in the OpenGL manual, of which I have a printed > copy. I didn't have to guess what functions to use. > > > > But then you discover that the one you were recommended to use is in the > opam library (the one you access by saying opam install ... with a default > configuration), and you decide to simplify things by using the Opam package > instead of including all the library's source code within your own > project. But when you do that, it doesn't work, because the Opam package > was was configured with optons that preclude essential functionality. (in > my case, the ability to load PNG files, not just JPEG). > > > > So what? another might say. Just tell opam to install with different > options. But that is another *huge* problem for a beginner. > > > > So I stick with embedding the library source code in my application. I > already understand how to edit a Makefile. > > > > ## Documentation > > > > And try to find documentation. I'm dealing with this problemm with gtk > at the moment. There's a lablgtk. There's a lablgtk2. Whats the > relationship between the two? And where's the documentation. There's > links to a tutorial all over the place, but they seem all to be to the same > web page, which isn't there. > > > > Opam has a way, I'm told, to install documentation along with the > package, but haven't been able to figure out how it works. Or maybe, just > maybe, the packages I've been trying it on don't have documentation. Who > knows? > > > > ## Are beginners even welcome? > > > > Is there anyone in charge of any of this? > > > > And what's the result? It's a lovely language, it deserves to be used, > but to get something done, I find myself programming in C++ instead, even > though the concpts of OCAML fit my style of programming ike a glove and fit > C++ like a rusty nail keeps my hand warm. Or spend days or months trying > things, asking questions, deciphering the answers, and so forth. > > > > I imagine if I were working in a shop where lots of people used OCaml, > all the ways of doing stuff would be local folklore. But for the isolated > beginner, there's a huge barrier to entry. > > > > It's a lovely language, but the pragmatics of its ecosystem are all > wrong. For a beginner. For someone with experience in the particular set > of tools and libraries he needs, it's great. > > > > And most of the problem is lack of organised, findable documentation. > > > > -- hendrik > > > > > > -- > > 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 > > -- > 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 >