1 October 2012
Thirty Days of OCaml
I’ve set myself a challenge that over the next thirty days, I’ll teach myself some functional programming using OCaml. This will be my first experience of FP in addition to learning a new language so I expect it’ll be quite challenging.
As I go along, I’ll try and write regular posts – hopefully one a day – describing my experiences and frustrations as well as the questions that occur to me. I suspect a number of the posts might be summaries to help me organise my understanding, especially where things seem unexpected. For the times where I can formulate well-posed questions, I’ll put them up in places like Stack Overflow as well as describing them here. Either way, keeping some form of diary will be useful for me and maybe also for other folks who’ve considered trying out FP and OCaml in particular.
Obviously, I’m not completely new to programming but I would say I have any deep experience (especially compared to the folks I tend to hang out with). Just to give you a better picture, my coding experience so far has involved:
- Some C/C++ with a little OOP programming for a High Energy Physics simulation (during my undergrad - a long time ago so I’ve forgotten everything)
- A bunch of Matlab and Bash scripting for analysis of neuroimaging data (during my PhD)
- A bunch of VBA within MS Excel for analysing behavioural data (also during my PhD – I really wish someone had pointed me to Python back then)
- Part of Learn Python the Hard Way (I keep dipping in and out of this)
I tried to dump most of my old scripts – at least those I could find – into a github repo, but I still haven’t collated the Matlab bits. You can judge my coding skills for yourself.
By the end of the 30 days, I’m hoping to have the ability to pick up and read other people’s OCaml code and write basic stuff for myself. I don’t actually have a particular project in mind but I’m not going to let that be an excuse for not getting started.
I’ll post again tomorrow with the mundane parts of how to get things installed and running on a Mac*. Onward!
*Admittedly, I already did this some time ago but I want this series of posts to start right from the beginning.
