On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 15:23:47 +0200 (MET DST), Pierre Weis
<pierre.weis@inria.fr> wrote:

>I thaught it was clear that this was a kind of joke (given the
>expressiosn "a bit special", "extremely addictive", "your last
>attempt", "it ensures that the process will long for years") and a
>sort of warm encouragement to keep on learning Caml, as testified by
>the smiley and the last phrase.
>
And yet most people who make jokes like these are just hiding their
arrogance behind humor.

>
>I would have been glad if you had understood: ``cool, he says I will
>spare years by choosing at once the right language to learn'', and if
>you had answered in the same humoristic manner.
>
Which is exactly the problem. Are you seriously saying that by
learning Caml, you have learned everything there is to learn
about programming? Maybe just the important stuff. ( It's clearly
obvious that you don't know what the idea behind "language of the
year" is. ) So are Monads and Arrows and ( what does Clean use for
output? ) are not worth learning? Goo's object model is insignificant?
BTW what kind of MOP does Caml use? What support does
it have for AOP?

>Furthermore, there is no lie in this message, it just told you the
>truth: the phrase
>
>   "Many people that learnt it seriously, just don't want to
>    give it up and go back to real programming with *p++ or null
>    pointers ..."
>
Or writing "advice"? This response alone shows the kind of tunnel
vision I mentioned.

BTW the people who I've met who hate *p++ and null pointers are
people who do use VB and *think* they are programmers. They then
go on to C++ and create huge messes by missusing *p++ and null
pointers. They then blame thed language instead of admitting their own
incompetence.
>
>> Often times when you see proponents say things like this, you soon
>> discover the emperor has no clothes. Such statements are often made
>> by people who lack diversity of experience in other programming
>> languages. 
>
>I suggest, you should not state such fact without justification: I
>mean, you don't even know the emperor, nor where he lives or what he
>looks like.
>
Maybe, maybe not. But when I see the emporer naked, I know he's naked.

>Second, if I am one of the ``people who lack diversity of experience
>in other programming languages'' that you mentioned, I'm just
>wandering if you know some facts about me, that could let you say so ?
>
>To my own knowledge, I have a pretty good experience on other
>programming languages, having written programs in a large number of
>them and having studied for years their syntax, static and dynamic
>semantics. I also have taught a lot of them to hordes of students.
>
Those who know do. Those who don't teach.
There is a big difference between "knowing" a language
snd having written code in it. Especially real world applications.

>> This causes a certain sort of tunnel vision in the way they perceive
>> things. Tools like debuggers are overestimated in their capabilities.
>> Languages features are touted way beyond their benefit. 
>
>I think you may have overlooked the capabilities of our debugger and
>you may just ignore our language features, their orthogonality and
>strength.
Perhaps like Joaquin Cuenca Abela you are not familiar with the power
of debuggers in other languages.

As for language features, well that's the point of learning a
language. For now  I have to go by what others say. And from what you
say I feel that I have to take the "power of OCaml" with a grain of
salt.
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