On Mon, 6 Nov 2000 16:21:19 -0800, Hao-yang Wang wrote:

>Did you imply that math is not practical? :-)

Nope, but I do think that for the average  "business/database"
programmer math doesn't do all that much. Specially if working
with an SQL database AND you are not doing DBA work.


>The Functional Approach to Programming is my favorite book on ML! And 
>Chapter 8 Syntactic Analysis is my favorite chapter.

Haven't got to that chapter yet.

>However, as its title says, this is a book about programming, and it is not a language 
>book.

I noticed. :-(


>Maybe we need a introductory book that (1) starts with examples in text 
>processing and other "symbolic" stuffs, which nicely shows off caml's 
>strong points in practical applications;

That would be great, although I don't know what kind of market
there is for it. After all how many people have even heard of
Ocaml or even ML? compared to other languages probably a few
small percentage. The main reason this is important is because
that is exactly what publishers look at.


>using camllex/camlyacc instead of writing our own parsers, etc.).

Haven't got to that point yet either.

>result will be a practical book that sells lots of copies and promotes 
>o'caml to lots of new fans,

Don't know if it would sell lots of copies, but it would surely
make learning the language much easier.



francisco
Moderator of the Corporate BSD list
http://www.egroups.com/group/BSD_Corporate