On a very sympathetic note: grasping Oz also took me some time (but it has totally paid off) and I cannot help thinking that there could have been a significant learning speedup were the tutorial clearer at some very critical points, i.e. those related to logic programming and search, especially spaces. It seems to me that there it suddenly becomes deprived of its "tutoriality" and increasingly goes into an incomplete language reference mood. I could understand dataflow variables and concurrency at once, but I just couldn't understand how search fitted in. My real teacher was Search.oz, in the end. And also this list, which is incredibly responsive, useful and collaborative.
In summary: yes, maybe the most serious among Oz's shortcomings today is its lack of tutoring material that take more into account what's really hard about the language, which can be partially inferred from new users' accounts of their troubles in tackling Oz. Cheers, Jorge. Selon Robin Lee Powell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 04:18:21PM -0700, Russ Abbott wrote: > > The first problem is simply to understand that Oz is *built to > > suspend.* That's not the sort of behavior that people expect when > > approach a programming language. > > I fully agree. That *really* takes some getting used to. > > > Most programming languages are not built with silent suspension as > > such a major feature. That's why I think it is important to > > emphasize that basic fact and to make it as visible as possible > > for new users. > > I think this can't be emphasized enough. If it was me, I'd > seriously consider putting this in a blink tag at the top of every > tutorial. OK, maybe not a blink tag. :-) But I'd still put it > there. Something like "Silently hanging is a normal response for an > Oz program with a bug.". > > -Robin > > -- > http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ > Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" > Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/ > > _________________________________________________________________________________ > mozart-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.mozart-oz.org/mailman/listinfo/mozart-users > _________________________________________________________________________________ mozart-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.mozart-oz.org/mailman/listinfo/mozart-users
