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Learn Programming with OCaml

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Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#21

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #13
ahoka wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why learn an instrument when you can just press play?

Cultural inertia: until recently, you couldn't just press play and get even a wide selection of music: for most of history, if you wanted music, you had to make it or hire someone to do it for you. More recently, you had to go to the store and buy it, which meant you didn't have much variety. Today, learning an instrument is for social status, inheriting the shine of the past, where music was rare and costly. The rea…

[dead]

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#22

Post by nine_k »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

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.

Two genuine questions. (1) Why not Rust? (2) Why not Haskell?

(I have my own answers, but I'd love to hear yours, too.)

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#23

Post by doc_ick »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #9
adalacelove wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should you learn history if it is already written in a book? Should you live if others are already living?

For most people, history is trivia.

If you ignore history everything is perfect, or at least a controlled slight deviation.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#24

Post by doc_ick »

throwaw12 wrote: post #2

> 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 mean if you want to let llms do everything for you go ahead. Wall-e implications aside, it seems like a great self centric life.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#25

Post by throwrioawfo »

nine_k wrote: post #22
giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

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.

Two genuine questions. (1) Why not Rust? (2) Why not Haskell? (I have my own answers, but I'd love to hear yours, too.)

(1) complexity

(2) performance

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#26

Post by dismalaf »

ahoka wrote: post #7
throwaw12 wrote: post #2

> 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?

Why learn an instrument when you can just press play?

Why does anyone have any hobbies?

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#27

Post by underlipton »

xiaoyu2006 wrote: post #4
throwaw12 wrote: post #2

> 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.

As always, it is good to be aware that many people are too anxious about more existential issues to comfortably an consistently expend effort on intellectually-taxing tasks that aren't perceived as directly related to their survival. If it's an issue with social values, it's less of one related to learning as it is to perpetuating artificial scarcity.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#28

Post by phtrivier »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

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.

Flamebait aside, has this been studied for real ? Curious how you would rate that...

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#29

Post by giraffe_lady »

nine_k wrote: post #22
giraffe_lady wrote: post #14

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.

Two genuine questions. (1) Why not Rust? (2) Why not Haskell? (I have my own answers, but I'd love to hear yours, too.)

Both force the model to reason about types too much. The more constrained type system plus global inference merely holds them to what they already wrote, with very fast feedback.

Rust is fine if you need it but most things don’t and ocaml has more convenient abstractions for “regular” work. If you need rust you need rust but ocaml isn’t that far off in perf.

Haskell type system is too expressive, it itself becomes a place for the agent to make mistakes and get bogged down.

Re: Learn Programming with OCaml

#30

Post by [deleted] »

underlipton wrote: post #27
xiaoyu2006 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As always, it is good to be aware that many people are too anxious about more existential issues to comfortably an consistently expend effort on intellectually-taxing tasks that aren't perceived as directly related to their survival. If it's an issue with social values, it's less of one related to learning as it is to perpetuating artificial scarcity.

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