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Learn OCaml

(ocaml-sf.org)
203 points smartmic | 1 comments | 27 Jun 25 20:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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uncircle ◴[28 Jun 25 09:37 UTC] No.44403407[source]▶
When I first looked at OCaml 15 years ago, it felt so complex and couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Now after almost a decade with Elixir, used to functional patterns and immutable data access, I followed a course on compiler construction in OCaml [1] and it felt surprising easy and straight forward, while my attempts using regular imperative languages feel like I’m wasting time on bureaucracy and boilerplate (i.e. in C, Rust or Python) - pattern matching is such an amazing feature.

1: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

replies(2): >>44403585 #>>44408426 #
1. baby ◴[28 Jun 25 21:47 UTC] No.44408426[source]▶
I have a theory that anyone who wants to learn OCaml as their first FL will fail miserably because the docs and the user experience is horrible. But if you've spend time learning haskell then it's not that bad. BTW I could read erlang pretty well I started learning OCaml and yet that didn't help me much I felt, maybe because erlang is still much simpler?