Re: [Caml-list] Use of OCaml in universities and engineering schools

[D. LoBraico <d@lobraico.com>]

Yaron Minsky writes:

> I know of few places in the US that teach Haskell in the intro
> sequence.  The main concern, I think, is that teaching imperative
> programming in Haskell requires too much sophistication.

The honors CS intro sequence here at University of Chicago uses Haskell
for the first course (and then a mix of Python, C, shell-scripting, awk,
and sed for the second course).

> That said, I think there are a decent number of places in Europe that
> do teach Haskell in the intro sequence, so YMMV.
>
> My sense is that in the US, ML has quite a good spot relative to other
> languages when it comes to University teaching.  The primary languages
> people teach with in elite US institutions are, I think:
>

> - Java

No Java in the CS curriculum for majors here (a few courses geared
towards technically-minded non-majors).

> - Python

The go-to language for a lot of 200-level courses because most of the
professors and grad students are comfortable with it (for
evaluation/grading purposes) and most students have had some contact
with it.

> - C

The other go-to language (obviously).

> - OCaml/SML

Until Dave MacQueen (one of the main SML researchers/developers,
http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/people/dbm) retired this past summer he
taught a functional programming class here that used SML and Haskell (half
and half). It's unclear what plans there are to teach a dedicated FP
class moving forward.

> - Scheme

The first course in the standard intro sequence is taught with Racket
(Scheme dialect(?)) with a particular focus on functional aspects.

-Dominick

>
> With Java and Python having the lion's share.  C and OCaml/SML are
> most often taught as part of the "advanced" intro class.
>
> I think this is a real opportunity for OCaml.  If we can make OCaml
> much easier to use for newbies who want to do something outside of
> class, I think it's a real chance to reach a wider audience.  OPAM
> gets us a chunk of the way, but there's more work to do beyond that.
>
> y
>
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 5:29 PM, Lukasz Stafiniak <lukstafi@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Evolution isn't about how much you achieve but about how well you compete.
>> How do we stand in relation to Haskell in education? Or is your worry solely
>> about giving ground to Python?
>>