[Caml-list] Is anybody still using Caml Light ?

[Caml-list] Is anybody still using Caml Light ?

[Yann Salmon]

Hello,

the (old) Caml webpage at INRIA <http://caml.inria.fr/index.en.html>
states that Caml Light "is actively used in education".

I wonder if this is still true. Is it ?

Caml Light is still used in the French classes préparatoires because of
an official text that mandates it. More and more teachers would like to
switch over to OCaml, but this would require a change in that text,
which might take time.

If, as I suspect, Caml Light is no longer actively used but for legal
reasons, it might be useful to rephrase this part of the Caml website to
state that Caml Light is no longer supported and that all users,
including for teaching purposes, are encouraged to switch.

In its present formulation, this web page might be giving governmental
regulators a false impression about Caml Light.

-- 
Cordialement,
Yann Salmon

Informatique
MPSI, PCSI, MP*, PC*
Descartes - Tours

<http://pro.yannsalmon.fr/>

Re: [Caml-list] Is anybody still using Caml Light ?

[Glen Mével]

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Yann Salmon a écrit (le 31/07/2017 à 22:56) :

> Caml Light is still used in the French classes préparatoires because
> of an official text that mandates it. More and more teachers would
> like to switch over to OCaml, but this would require a change in that
> text, which might take time.

Plus, from my own experience, these are math and physics students which
are given an insight of computer science. It is not as if they were
taught deep computer engineering. The few they see of the language might
as well be modern OCaml with almost no visible change¹. In fact, most
exam readers will tacitly accept the OCaml syntax in the answers, given
there is a syntactic difference in those small code snippets, and given
the reader notices it.

I believe that this is also the reason why the education system
estimates that switching to OCaml is not worth the effort. Caml Light
being dead is a 100% guarantee of stability! They will probably consider
switching when the latest Windows won’t run the tools anymore. :-)

-- 
Glen Mével

¹: One of the few, minor, differences is writing == instead of = for
type definitions. That, and translating the names of the standard
library functions into the new module system, which is straightforward
(list_nth → List.nth) and anyway students are usually not expected to
use the stdlib.


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