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I was taught the Standard ML of New Jersey (which as a non-American I did not realise is a joke, it's referring to the company now known to you as Exxon, the St

I was taught the Standard ML of New Jersey (which as a non-American I did not realise is a joke, it's referring to the company now known to you as Exxon, the Standard Oil of New Jersey) at university. I strongly believe that - although my home institution no longer teaches an ML as first language - this is the best way to teach CS to undergraduates. An ML has all the fundamental ideas you will need to also teach about this discipline, and (so long as you choose e.g. SML/NJ or similar, not Rust or something) it won't be a language the average teenager you recruited might already know, so the week 1 exercise showing they've understood what they're doing is actually work for all of your students, averting a scenario where some of them drift away only to realise at exam time that they haven't learned a thing.

sshine 2y ago
Thank you for sharing this American joke. Standard ML was my go-to language for many years. I always found SML/NJ complicated both to compile and use, compared to... ...well, pretty much every other compiler: Moscow ML, Poly/ML, MLton, MLKit.
- jjice 2y ago
  Agreed - we wrote an ML style language in my uni compilers course and it was taught by the primary maintainer of MLTon (Dr Fluet is a great guy). Since it’s full program optimizing, the compilation took a while. He told us to give SML NJ a try for faster compilation but slower execution. It was a headache and only marginally faster compilation for our use case. That said, it’s the OG so I give it some slack. I did enjoy MLton though, but it’s easier to do when the instructor wrote it.
smlismyhomeboy 2y ago
Huh. As an American, I had just assumed it was because it was developed at Princeton.
- JoelMcCracken 2y ago
  Ditto! I've never heard of "Standard Oil of New Jersey" myself.
layer8 2y ago
> Exxon, the Standard Oil of New Jersey It would have been fun if they had renamed to JSON instead of Exxon.

sshine 2y ago

Thank you for sharing this American joke. Standard ML was my go-to language for many years. I always found SML/NJ complicated both to compile and use, compared to... ...well, pretty much every other compiler: Moscow ML, Poly/ML, MLton, MLKit.

jjice 2y ago
Agreed - we wrote an ML style language in my uni compilers course and it was taught by the primary maintainer of MLTon (Dr Fluet is a great guy). Since it’s full program optimizing, the compilation took a while. He told us to give SML NJ a try for faster compilation but slower execution. It was a headache and only marginally faster compilation for our use case. That said, it’s the OG so I give it some slack. I did enjoy MLton though, but it’s easier to do when the instructor wrote it.

smlismyhomeboy 2y ago

Huh. As an American, I had just assumed it was because it was developed at Princeton.

JoelMcCracken 2y ago
Ditto! I've never heard of "Standard Oil of New Jersey" myself.

layer8 2y ago

> Exxon, the Standard Oil of New Jersey It would have been fun if they had renamed to JSON instead of Exxon.