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  • What is the recommended GUI framework for OCaml? (Please don't say HTML)
    by amelius
  • OCaml programmers, what learning resource would you recommend starting out with? I know there's https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/chapters/basics/intro.html. How does this book compare? Anything else you would recommend?
    by Fervicus
  • This book, while excellent otherwise, is much too harder for beginners, IMO. The pace is too brisk, and it's far from pedagogically useful if you don't already know how to program.
    by jan_m_savage
  • I do really wonder what it would be like to learn to program for the first time with OCaml.

    I remember learning to use OCaml in a properly functional way after so long writing code in C and it was really miserably painful trying to change how I thought about algorithms. I eventually got over the hill and it changed how I write code in C (for the better?), but I do wonder if it would have been easier to have learned OCaml as a first language instead.

    by sweetjuly
  • This book is a great.

    A common misunderstanding around OCaml is to classify it as a functional programming language, it is actually a multi-paradigm language. In short, in OCaml, you can write in any paradigm you want, imperative, object, or functional.

    Typically, I write in a mix of OCaml and stubs in C (for bindings to Linux libraries), for everything, to replace shell scripts, Python scripts, Javascript/Typescript, but also for big applications (I wrote a clone of Emacs in OCaml, a long time ago, before writing MLdonkey).

    Once you have started using it, it does not replace your main programming languages, it replaces all the languages you needed...

    by lefessan
  • This is the best OCaml resource I know, and I have gone through it in full, and highly recommend:

    CS3110: OCaml Programming: Correct + Efficient + Beautiful [0]

    It is one of the best programming resources that I know of.

    [0]: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

    by __rito__
  • Tangentially, a great interview with the creator of OCaml, Xavier Leroy [1].

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cswiqrq6So

    by zvmaz
  • I believe that an ML should be the First Language for Computer Scientists. It's much less clear which language we should teach people for whom it will likely be their Only Language, today Python is common, and for fields which care about stats often R is used, I've also seen Java used in this role. But for a First Language specifically I am in no doubt that an ML should be chosen, and this is despite the fact that the University where I work has taught Java for decades and Python most recently as First Language.

    I'm an old man, I learned the Standard ML of New Jersey when I was an undergraduate many years ago, but I'm pretty sure that experience though it isn't irrelevant, did not overly colour my belief in what we [speaking broadly of humanity] ought to teach.

    by tialaramex

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