[Caml-list] new user - old questions

[Gour <gour@atmarama.net>]

Hello!

Some years ago I was looking for adequate language for one open-source
project to be done in free time and although I took a look at OCaml,
somehow, I didn't like syntax and went playing with Haskell.

Never really grokked monads and had feeling that despite nice syntax,
some things are more complicated for pragmatic programming than they
should be.

I managed to scare enough few potential contributors and had to
postpone the project for 'sometime in the future'.

Later, I was exploring D (v2), but it seems that the language is never
finished, code breaks often from one version to another, poor GUI
bindings support etc.

Shortly thought about using Python+Cython, but dynamic language never
sounded right for my project.

In utter despair I went to evaluate Ada which seems as nice (a bit
verbose) language, mature, actively developed, good ecosystem, but
somehow I was missing lack of FP features.

For a short time I took a look at Nimrod - nice & interesting language,
but very small community and lack of FP features.

Then, I do not know exactly how, I got inspired to take a look at OCaml
and in a very short time, I could see that there is a language with
quite OK syntax, actively developed, not small community enabling me to
use FP language with thinking too much about monads and category theory
in order to do practical things.

The remaining thing is to get hints how to proceed, iow.:

a) Real World Ocaml is going to be released in Oct 2013, so I wonder is
there any online/paperback book you can recommend? I'm on Debian wheezy
which means no 4.0 yet, but probably we'll try to take advantage of new
features in due course of time

b) it looks that Emacs is the best-supported editor for OCaml. How is
support in Vim/Geany? What do you recommend?

Now I wonder about Typerex which looks cool, but I was told on #ocaml
that it's "dead project" and was recommended to use tuareg mode?

That's actually everything or most important...editor & good book to
start with?


Sincerely,
Gour


-- 
Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, 
O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion — 
at that time I descend Myself.

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