7 ms·

Looks like OCaml was not your first language. I suspect you are coming from a imperative language background. OCaml is slow? and your recommendation is to use

by FraaJad 11y ago

Looks like OCaml was not your first language. I suspect you are coming from a imperative language background. OCaml is slow? and your recommendation is to use Haskell instead... That doesn't compute well if we were to assume that you are writing some compute-intensive tasks for which (unoptimized non-C language can be "slower". It more likely the case that students hate whatever languages the university teaches in place of language-de-jour. (Just read the reviews of SICP on Amazon). And yes there are pages on the internet that are older than 2006, so what? No one goes "Pffft.. this is 300 years old.." when they come across Newton's Principa.

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
> And yes there are pages on the internet that are older than 2006, so what? No one goes "Pffft.. this is 300 years old.." when they come across Newton's Principa. The difference is that programming languages evolve all the time. Having such an old page still up and promoted to the front page of Hacker News tells everyone that OCaml hasn't evolved since 2006.
- FraaJad 11y ago
  The issue is with the moderator changing the link from an inner page pointing to (IIRC) http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/ocaml-class/userdefined.html http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/ocaml-class/userdefined.h... to the top level course page.
lesterpig 11y ago
Well, I pretty love javascript, is it an imperative language? ;) Please don't be so sharp, I really don't understand why this link is in HN, and I'm just exposing my point of view, after practising OCaml a lot. So what, I'm a student so my opinion is worthless?
- FraaJad 11y ago
  Ah yes, the "functional" and "object oriented" Javascript, how I love thee. When you are starting out, convenience and familiarity (which are visceral) can trump abstract notions like "pure", "correct", "reason-able". I'm not saying your opinion is worthless, just that your judgement could be coloured by inexperience. My sincere recommendation is to use "Real World OCaml" - https://realworldocaml.org/ https://realworldocaml.org/ as a reference to learn OCaml instead of old and busted tutorials littering the internet. Trust me, I have been trying to learn OCaml "on the side" for a few years and RWO is the first book that I have absolute love (even accounting for a wide variety of PL books I read) for being practical, current and explaining stuff.
  - lesterpig 11y ago
    I understand your point of view. Thank you for the link, I've already checked it and it's really interesting. Do you have some examples of well-known applications built with OCaml? I'll have to check that too.

by FraaJad 11y ago

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago

> And yes there are pages on the internet that are older than 2006, so what? No one goes "Pffft.. this is 300 years old.." when they come across Newton's Principa. The difference is that programming languages evolve all the time. Having such an old page still up and promoted to the front page of Hacker News tells everyone that OCaml hasn't evolved since 2006.

FraaJad 11y ago
The issue is with the moderator changing the link from an inner page pointing to (IIRC) http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/ocaml-class/userdefined.html http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/ocaml-class/userdefined.h... to the top level course page.

lesterpig 11y ago

Well, I pretty love javascript, is it an imperative language? ;) Please don't be so sharp, I really don't understand why this link is in HN, and I'm just exposing my point of view, after practising OCaml a lot. So what, I'm a student so my opinion is worthless?

FraaJad 11y ago
Ah yes, the "functional" and "object oriented" Javascript, how I love thee. When you are starting out, convenience and familiarity (which are visceral) can trump abstract notions like "pure", "correct", "reason-able". I'm not saying your opinion is worthless, just that your judgement could be coloured by inexperience. My sincere recommendation is to use "Real World OCaml" - https://realworldocaml.org/ https://realworldocaml.org/ as a reference to learn OCaml instead of old and busted tutorials littering the internet. Trust me, I have been trying to learn OCaml "on the side" for a few years and RWO is the first book that I have absolute love (even accounting for a wide variety of PL books I read) for being practical, current and explaining stuff.
- lesterpig 11y ago
  I understand your point of view. Thank you for the link, I've already checked it and it's really interesting. Do you have some examples of well-known applications built with OCaml? I'll have to check that too.