Gerd, I think this is a great topic, but perhaps we could change the title to keep it separate from the main discussion?
(e.g. FP-language education) Yitzhak On Dec 6, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> I will not jump in the "how to save OCaml from dying because nothing >> moves" discussion. But just in the "nothing moves" discussion. >> >> On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:52 PM, ivan chollet <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> The current status of OCaml is more than stable enough to serve its >>> goals, >>> which are to teach computer science to french undergrads and provide a >>> playground for computer languages researchers. >> >> First, french undergrads sadly often still use camllight... Which is >> not the case for example of Harvard undergrad >> (http://www.seas.harvard.edu/courses/cs51/lectures.html) and some >> UPenn one (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~cis341/). But you are right that >> I can't find any well known university out of France using OCaml to >> teach computer science... > > Well, if you ask whether _any_ FP language is taught, the results won't be > much better. > > I'm currently doing consulting for a web company (in Germany) - around 60 > developers, many fresh from the University. There are only three guys > knowing FP languages at all - one Scala, one Erlang, and one R. It's a > complete failure of the academic education. > > IMHO it does not matter which FP language you are taught in. The point is > that the students understand the ideas, and that they recognize them as > relevant. These web developers here in the company have no clue that they > actually developing a big continuation-style FP program. > > Gerd > > >> >> And for the "computer languages researchers" part, I'll refer you to >> http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/ >> >>> A fork could possibly get traction from the community, but you would >>> have to >>> provide interesting features that the real OCaml does not provide. Bug >>> fixes >>> won't be enough. >> >> So now, here is my real problem. What are those famous so wanted >> feature that this fork will provide? And what makes you (a plural you) >> think that ocaml is such a slowly moving and evolving language? >> According to the caml web site, in the past two years, we've seen >> native dynlink, polymorphic recursion and first class module making >> there way into the language. According to what can be found on the >> trunk of the ocaml svn, the next release will have GADTs. And the >> compiler have also been modified to incorporate things like a nice >> multiprecision library (http://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/zarith/) >> and some backends have been added. >> >> Except maybe haskell and Scala, can you really name me a programming >> language that in fact evolves that quickly, and basically without ever >> breaking backward compatibility? I really don't think that any of >> python, perl, java, C, C++ would really win. But I might be wrong. >> >> So before saying we need to fork the OCaml compiler to add "much >> needed patches", it would be nice to minimally agree on witch patches >> are so much needed. Because if "the community" can't agree on this, I >> doubt the future of this potential fork will be so bright. >> >> My 2c. >> >> -- >> Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: >> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list >> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners >> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs >> >> >> > > > -- > Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany [email protected] > Creator of GODI and camlcity.org. > Contact details: http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html > Company homepage: http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de > *** Searching for new projects! Need consulting for system > *** programming in Ocaml? Gerd Stolpmann can help you. > > > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > ----------------------------- Yitzhak Mandelbaum -- Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
