Wouldn't it be preferable for students to use OCaml in a browser? I'm just teaching a bunch of people F# and I've recommended tryfsharp.org to them for that reason. Perhaps it would be better to build something comparable in the OCaml world, rather than starting down the arduous route of an easy-to-install optimizing native code compiler?
Cheers, Jon. > -----Original Message----- > From: Andrej Bauer [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: 15 December 2011 07:30 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user > > Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation are very > welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for the users, who > care > just about one thing: to have a click & install distribution of Ocaml that > actually > works. > > Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and they never > heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command prompt. > > It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter what > is under > the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks about it, much less so > what > Linux people think about it (I am typing this on a Linux box). Someone just > needs > to do it, and Jonathan Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you > have the time to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, > i.e., > it contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just > sticks it > under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of whether there already > is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will be received very positively by > many > people, even though "the experts" > will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way, etc. Just > do it. > > Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content: > strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for flexdll, > etc. > > The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students, but I > can't > because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me _anything_ that actually > works. Otherwise I will keep teaching "functional programming" with > Mathematica... > > That's my opinion. > > With kind regards, > > Andrej > > -- > 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 -- 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
