Practical OCaml 1st ed. Edition

by Joshua B. Smith (Author)

19 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1590596203

ISBN-10: 159059620X

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Objective Caml (OCaml) is an open source programming language that utilizes both functional and object oriented programming. Practical OCaml teaches Objective Caml in a straightforward manner, teaching all the features of this functional programming language by example. You will learn how to utilize OCaml to create a simple database, do reporting, and create a spam filter. You will also learn how to do complex log file scanning, create your own network servers by creating a ShoutCast server, and create a web crawler. By the book's conclusion, you will be well on your way to creating your own applications with OCaml.

About the Author

Joshua B. Smith is a consultant specializing in data problems and computing infrastructure. He got into computers while an undergraduate at Denison University in Ohio and spends most of his programming time using Python, OCaml, and Java. Josh lives in Chicago with his wife, Carol, and their two cats.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Apress; 1st ed. edition (October 20, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 487 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 159059620X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590596203
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.33 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.06 x 10 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,595,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #439 in Functional Software Programming
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- #3,910 in Software Design & Engineering

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Joshua B. Smith

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Joshua Smith is a consultant specializing in data problems and computing infrastructure. He got into computers while an undergraduate at Denison University and spends most of his programming time using Python, OCaml, and Java. Josh lives in Chicago with his wife and their two cats.

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Amazon Customer

A shockingly bad book

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2007

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One of the previous reviewers described this book as being "only for the experienced". Sadly, this gives the book credit it simply doesn't deserve. The book isn't good for anyone: it's poorly written and confusing through and through. The examples are misconceived, poorly written, and even badly formatted. And the exposition exposes the fact that the author doesn't know OCaml very well, and isn't even much of a wordsmith. "Practical OCaml" is the worst programming book I have ever read, and I wish it would simply vanish from the scene. I fear it will do OCaml a great disservice by confusing and repelling potential users of the language.

12 people found this helpful

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Dan'l Miller

If you already know what it says, you'll know what it says.

Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2011

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OCaml is a language from an alternate-dimensional universe, even among its peers of Haskell and Lisp. By its very nature, the what-the-hecks per minute will be high when first learning OCaml. OCaml needs a book where the author serves as tour guide and ambassador to a very foreign land, gently introducing why the OCaml natives have the peculiar-yet-advanced culture that they do. OCaml needs a book where OCaml's dissent from the procedural imperative OO languages is compared with and contrasted against analogous technology from a variety of sources, so that the reader can say: oh, *that* is what OCaml is achieving there. OCaml needs a book that builds up a philosophy of programming from scratch, explaining why OCaml does nearly everything differently (e.g., so-called variables that are not variable in value, at least not in the historically-customary sense). This is not that book; this is not that author.

Instead, it seems that this book and its author seek to increase the what-the-hecks per minute well beyond even the high rate that is inherent in OCaml itself as a topic (of any book by any author). This book seems to be written from the following (hypothetical) perspective: OCaml is a mind-bender, so let's gratuitously amplify that mind-bending, because that is what I, the author, really enjoy about OCaml (or programming or life). Although perhaps such a premise would make for a good book a la Charles Dickens's scathing satire of abstract mathematics in _Alice in Wonderland_, this is not that book, but perhaps this is the author who could (with characters and plot that are both absent in this book) accomplish such a work.

All that said, this book does (almost accidentally) accomplish a subset of the aforementioned goals iff the reader reads one paragraph or one snippet of OCaml code and then ponders what was just said from the perspective of: if I were writing this book, how would I have presented the underlying subject matter that was not overtly presented in the wording that I just read. And then go back and re-read the authors words to see if what the reader re-imagined conforms to the author's presentation. Using this (somewhat painful) style of extraordinarily-active reading-via-rewriting-in-my-mind, I actually obtained a moderate amount of usefulness from this book.

4 people found this helpful

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zbrown

Its a "Jump" to Conclusions mat!

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2009

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The book is poorly written, disorganized and jumps around kind of like the author is on crack or something. I got about 2 chapters in and couldn't even go further.

If you're really interested in learning OCaml, there are links around on the "tubes" (Internet) for what is often called "the OCaml book" written by Jason Hickey. Its very good and if you can't deal with it not being in hard copy form, then just print the PDF :).

4 people found this helpful

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Raj

Very bad book

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2006

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This is one of the worst books I've read. What a waste of money...

The basic syntax issues are glossed over. Type polymorphism example is introduced with an error. I can go on and on

-with statement, type statement etc . Author does nothing to guide the reader through a maze of jumbled syntax. Terrible waste of a really good idea.

34 people found this helpful

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madeinquant

Useful to learn functional programming (ReasonML) for experienced programmer.

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2020

To be fair, this book is not as bad as previous reviews said, it is useful for me to learn functional programming(ReasonML). OCaml is not a popular programming language, learning OCaml is difficult but it also benefits me. There are a lot of new programming concepts in OCaml, I did a lot of old school programming (i.e. ANSI C, C++, LISP), since there are a lot of new concepts of functional programming and learning OCaml is challengelling.

I am programming data structure and algorithms in javascript, I found javascript is flexible and the ecosystem has grown. You can find almost all useful libraries by googling, however, I don’t like the syntax and it is not strongly typed. Debugging javascript is a nightmare, I learn to code in ReasonML and to migrate an existing code into ReasonML. There are a lot of headaches during code migration, this book helps me a lot to resolve problems, all that said, this book is suitable for readers who have experienced a lot of programming, read the algorithms, get the concepts and write the algorithms in your own familiar programming language. If you expect to cut and paste the code of your programming, this may not be suitable for you.

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B. W.

This book is a shame

Reviewed in Germany on July 31, 2012

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This book is a shame - for OCaml, for Apress (and especially for "Practical Common Lisp", a great book from them and a book that this book wishes it were). It is really hard to open it without finding typos (or worse: content errors). This makes it very hard to learn OCaml. If you already know OCaml, then - maybe - you will find some good information in it.

Consider this and the fact that this book is a little dated by now (it uses OCaml 3.09, while 4.00 just came out): Don't buy it. Wait for Real World OCaml which is to be released this fall. I will buy that one, too.

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Practical OCaml 1st ed. Edition

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Joshua B. Smith

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