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Learn Programming with OCaml

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61–70 of 149 posts

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#61

> Learn Programming with OCaml Lately, I keep asking myself, do I need to learn this new thing, should I force myself to learn this thing, LLMs know it anyways and so on. So (asking genuinely), should we learn these things?

You can also learn for your own amusement, and solely for the fun of comprehension; a lot of mathematician were driven by this. It's a shame current social value places so much utilitariaism on learning.

I like baking. There are machines that can bake bread at an industrial scale that I cannot compete with. There are home kneaders that do much of the work very well. I use one of those more often than not.

I still think it worth my time kneading dough by hand. It teaches me the various properties of flour, how external factors like humidity or temperature impact the overall process, and I believe that it makes me a better baker, even when I use a machine, because I am better at controlling what the machine does. When I get a new brand of flour I will make sure to bake everything by hand first to "get a feel".

Kneading by hand is also very relaxing to me. This is probably the main reason I bake in the first place.

Programming, and other activities are not very different. We now have machines that can do it faster, at a fraction of the quality many people deem good enough. If you hate coding, that is probably all you need to use, and learning a new language might just be a frustrating experience not worth subjecting yourself to. But if you enjoy coding then it should make you better at it, even when you use the machines.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#63
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Camlkit-gui for macOS

Anything for Linux? Or cross-platform? I looked for Qt bindings but they appeared to be abandoned last time I checked.

I see that unison (file sync tool) seems to use: https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/

For Linux UI.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#64
post #63
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything for Linux? Or cross-platform? I looked for Qt bindings but they appeared to be abandoned last time I checked.

I see that unison (file sync tool) seems to use: https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/ For Linux UI.

But that uses Gtk 3. Gtk 4 is already more than 5 years old ...

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#66

OCaml is the LLM secret weapon right now. They are better at writing it than they are any other language.* That’s all I have to say about it. * Other “pure” hindley-milner languages are tied but among them ocaml has some particular strengths that I’m sure others will discuss.

Couldn't agree more. Even when the models could barely write it, the compiler was so good

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#67

> Learn Programming with OCaml Lately, I keep asking myself, do I need to learn this new thing, should I force myself to learn this thing, LLMs know it anyways and so on. So (asking genuinely), should we learn these things?

LLMs are better at OCaml than any other language, and being able to read and think in OCaml is very helpful to understanding LLM generated OCaml code.

Also, it may very well be the decade of formal verification - if so, OCaml is a good place to be.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#69

> Learn Programming with OCaml Lately, I keep asking myself, do I need to learn this new thing, should I force myself to learn this thing, LLMs know it anyways and so on. So (asking genuinely), should we learn these things?

I would not make that dependent on LLMs. If OCaml covers a use case you have, why not.

Personally I try to stick within my own niche though - ruby, java and also python (ruby is unfortunately losing grounds really hard now, the writing was on the well in the last some years though, and people such as DHH are now indeed a liability rather than an asset to be had, but that's a side topic).

I think what LLMs will force in the long run is to make programming languages used by real humans in a traditional way, more effective. That is, writing code by humans will have to become a lot more efficient, both time-wise and speed-wise. And for that there is always a use case IMO since LLMs are, despite the promo, incredibly stupid.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#70

I know a few programs written in OCaml such as weidu. OCaml is a very strange programming language. I don't think it will be able to sustain e. g. success stories of other languages, such as python.

Ocaml is ancient at this point. It's never going to be python, but I doubt it's going to disappear.
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