From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id TAA27177; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:08:37 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA26683 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:08:35 +0100 (MET) Received: from gradient.cis.upenn.edu (GRADIENT.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.67.48]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h2CI8Yf18126 for ; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:08:34 +0100 (MET) Received: from gradient.cis.upenn.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by gradient.cis.upenn.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h2CI8LwX016474 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NOT); Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:08:22 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (agoodloe@localhost) by gradient.cis.upenn.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8/Submit) with ESMTP id h2CI8LDC016470; Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:08:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:08:21 -0500 (EST) From: Alwyn Goodloe To: "Richard W.M. Jones" cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml popularity In-Reply-To: <20030312171242.GA11435@redhat.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Spam: no; 0.00; alwyn:01 goodloe:01 agoodloe:01 gradient:01 caml-list:01 prover:01 gui:01 screens:99 drscheme:01 pierre:01 weis:01 introductory:99 higher-order:01 freshmeat:01 dbi:99 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I agree. This is really the difference between what most people do in industry and what we do in academia. People out there just don't care about how well you can build an automated theorem prover if they can't draw their GUI screens and access their Oracle data bases. I think this is why people will say it takes a while to be productive in OCAML. If you want to read and write files, access the DB, and draw a screen, then you probably have to go beyond most introductions to OCAML. Unfortunately, most developers will just stop there. A book akin to the O Riley Java networking book would be great as well. There is a lot of cool OCAML stuff out there for networking - hopefully someone will write a book to spread the news. On the other hand there really isn't a good intro to CS in OCAML book in English. The good texts combiled with the DrScheme environmnet is a big reason for the use of Scheme at many Universities in the US. Alwyn agoodloe@gradient.cis.upenn.edu On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 08:02:30AM +1300, Graham Guttocks wrote: > > Pierre Weis wrote: > > > > > > This may be the main drawback of Objective Caml: there is no > > > ``Objective Caml for dummies''. That may be the price to pay to use > > > a powerful and theoretically well-founded language. > > > > Do you mean that such a book could not be written, or simply that it > > just has not been written yet? I personally would like to see an > > ``Objective Caml for dummies'' as the available introductory material > > (in English) is pretty poor IMO. > > Someone else actually said it well on this list a while back. There > is no "Programming Perl"-equivalent for OCaml. > > And please don't start by telling me about the lambda calculus or > higher-order functions. > > Start by telling me how to read and write files. How to draw a nice > picture. Go on to tell me how to access my SQL database from an > OCaml application server. > > Rich. > > -- > Richard Jones, Red Hat Inc. (London, UK) http://www.redhat.com/software/ccm > http://www.annexia.org/ Freshmeat projects: http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj > PTHRLIB is a library for writing small, efficient and fast servers in C. > HTTP, CGI, DBI, lightweight threads: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/pthrlib/ > > ------------------- > To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners