And one of the great sub-topic is how to avoid that students *hate* FP. When i say to other programmers i code in ocaml, they answer they absolutely hate this language they have to learn at university. I met this "effect" more than 15 times ! There's a great problem of old boring professors who teach FP with uninteresting problems (and lectures). So the litlle part of programmers who faces FP-language simply forget how to think in FP way..
2011/12/6 Yitzhak Mandelbaum <[email protected]> > 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 > > -- --------------------- https://twitter.com/#!/ontologiae/ http://linuxfr.org/users/montaigne -- 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
