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I'm very surprised articles about OCaml (and more generally functional programming) are popular on Hacker News. FP isn't exactly a new thing. I would assume mos

I'm very surprised articles about OCaml (and more generally functional programming) are popular on Hacker News. FP isn't exactly a new thing. I would assume most CS graduates have experience with functional programming (I learned "Caml Light" as an undergraduate in 1996).

dragonwriter 12y ago
I think -- even if they were exposed in school, and not all working programmers are CS graduates -- that many working programmers have little current experience with FP, and many lack either experience or current awareness of any particular FP language addressed in any given article (or, if they do, don't have experience with it in the context that the article is presenting.) Such that, even though they might be distantly familiar with FP in general, its quite likely that articles on particular FP techniques, FP languages, or applications of FP to a particular problem area can still be useful. Sometimes, it'll be useful just by reminding you of something you've been too caught up with dealing with what is immediately useful to think much about since school, but which might be more applicable to the problems you have now than the problems you had in programming work closer to the time you were in school.
agravier 12y ago
As you learned Caml Light, chances are you went to a French university. As far as I understand, outside of France, OCaml/Caml Light are seldom taught at university. WRT FP, many universities will use Java or C++ to teach programming fundamentals (a terrible thing imo). Some teach or used to teach Scheme or Python.
- drifkin 12y ago
  We did a little bit of OCaml in our undergrad PL class at UCLA. If I remember correctly, it was only a couple weeks, and you're probably right in that it was a bit unusual. The less exotic classes I took mostly used C++.
fab13n 12y ago
FP isn't a new thing in academia. But having it used in practical conditions, by companies intended to make money and writing "normal" software (i.e. not things related to formal semantics), is still really newsworthy. And that's OCaml's appeal IMO: it focuses on things that aren't sexy to academics. Good compiler performances due to careful codegen rather than exotic theories, willingness to be "polluted" by side-effects rather than wrangling monad transformers, eager evaluation to get predictability rather than cute code...

dragonwriter 12y ago

I think -- even if they were exposed in school, and not all working programmers are CS graduates -- that many working programmers have little current experience with FP, and many lack either experience or current awareness of any particular FP language addressed in any given article (or, if they do, don't have experience with it in the context that the article is presenting.) Such that, even though they might be distantly familiar with FP in general, its quite likely that articles on particular FP techniques, FP languages, or applications of FP to a particular problem area can still be useful. Sometimes, it'll be useful just by reminding you of something you've been too caught up with dealing with what is immediately useful to think much about since school, but which might be more applicable to the problems you have now than the problems you had in programming work closer to the time you were in school.

agravier 12y ago

As you learned Caml Light, chances are you went to a French university. As far as I understand, outside of France, OCaml/Caml Light are seldom taught at university. WRT FP, many universities will use Java or C++ to teach programming fundamentals (a terrible thing imo). Some teach or used to teach Scheme or Python.

drifkin 12y ago
We did a little bit of OCaml in our undergrad PL class at UCLA. If I remember correctly, it was only a couple weeks, and you're probably right in that it was a bit unusual. The less exotic classes I took mostly used C++.

fab13n 12y ago

FP isn't a new thing in academia. But having it used in practical conditions, by companies intended to make money and writing "normal" software (i.e. not things related to formal semantics), is still really newsworthy. And that's OCaml's appeal IMO: it focuses on things that aren't sexy to academics. Good compiler performances due to careful codegen rather than exotic theories, willingness to be "polluted" by side-effects rather than wrangling monad transformers, eager evaluation to get predictability rather than cute code...