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> How many 10 year old kids are there working as professional programmers? Many of them in 10 years time, and they will be using concepts they learned when the
by hashbig 6y ago
> How many 10 year old kids are there working as professional programmers?
Many of them in 10 years time, and they will be using concepts they learned when they were 10. And FP enthusiasts would complain why no one uses their favourite language.
My point is, if we want to get more people to use FP we have to make it more accessible. Everything from building better tooling, tutorials, environments. Good languages alone don’t matter.
You can’t tell me that it’s just as easy to get started with JavaScript or Python today as it’s to start with OCaml. That’s just delusional.
- gmfawcett 6y agoIt would be nice if 10 year olds can be exposed to functional programming. But it's hardly a necessary prerequisite. There are plenty of technologies that people adopt later in life and which are hugely successful (SQL/RDBMS is a great example). If you want to expose 10-year olds to functional programming, Logo [1] is a great place to start, and has been for decades. That's where I picked it up (I didn't know it at the time, but looking backwards it's now clear). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%2...
- smabie 6y agoI actually think it's easier. dune and opam are so much nicer than python/pip/conda or whatever. Have you used OCaml? Because you can set up a complete environment with IDE support in like 5 minutes flat. It's actually one of the easiest environments to set up of any language. dune, merlin, opam, and utop provide everything you would possibly need.