From: Dan Schmidt Date: 2002-12-18T02:06:17+09:00 Subject: Re: OT: Functional Language Recommendation Wai-Sun Chia writes: | I'm planning to study a functional language in the comming year (new | year's resolution, as I have zero experience/knowledge on functional | languages) and have narrowed it down to either Ocaml and Haskell. It'd | be great if any of you could share your experiences with either one or | both of them. | | Areas I'm interested in: | - databases access (Mysql, PostgreSQL, Oracle) | - network access (sockets, HTTP, SMTP, etc.) | - operating system access (shared mem, etc.) | - GUI widgets access (Qt, Gtk+, Fox, etc.) | - web access (Apache module?) | - object-orientedness If you are studying a language in order to actually do something concrete with it (which it seems you are) as opposed to learning more theoretically about how to express programs in a functional way, I'd recommend Ocaml. Haskell is really beautiful and elegant but it can take more effort to write real-world apps because everything must be expressed purely functionally. Ocaml allows you to write in an imperative/side-effect style when you need it. I don't know which of your interests are specifically supported, but there are a lot of libraries out there; do a search on 'caml hump'. There's a pretty good book online, DEVELOPING APPLICATIONS WITH OBJECTIVE CAML, at . If you decide to learn Haskell instead (or in addition), I highly recommend Paul Hudak's THE HASKELL SCHOOL OF EXPRESSION. Dan -- http://www.dfan.org