Why does Cambridge teach OCaml as the first programming language?

[Cewu]

The sound on the video seems broken... I cant hear anything?
Edit: I tried it on the PC and it works. But on the phone, the only thing I can hear are murmurs. I dont have this problem with any other video...
Edit2: deleted cashe and force stopped the app... didnt help...
I even reinstalled Youtube... still doesn't help. This sure is one very weird problem...

This video and your previous video both have this problem. I picked a few random videos on your channel but only the last 2 have their sound distorted and quiet.

I watched your talk on the PC and I have to say that the quality is superb. I am sure I will enjoy watching your lectures in the future :)

[paul.steckler]

I've been programming in OCaml for about 30 years, since the time it was known as Caml Special Light. It's still one of my favorite languages.

[courier]

Just clicked on this video randomly because the title really interested me when I saw your channel was small I was really surprised, you are a great speaker and very entertaining. You are a professor at Cambridge though so I guess that is expected.

[douglasjohnson]

Wow - thank you! I didn't you expect to answer all of them!

[harleyspeedthrust]

When I went to uni I took the intro honors class, which was taught in OCaml. I was annoyed at first because I had already been programming for 6 years and I had a bit of an ego about taking an intro class. I ended up learning a lot in that class, and now OCaml and related languages are among my favorites. I think it's a great first language - I've found that experienced programmers tend to struggle the most when they're introduced to FP due to their existing understanding of programming. If you have no prior understanding, then FP is much easier to accept on its own terms. Other common concepts and paradigms are easier to learn because you've already got a grasp on one of the harder ideas.

[Laura-hlhg]

This video is amazing! I love your perspective on teaching programming, and now I'm genuinely sad that I won't be able to learn Computer Science at Cambridge.

[prgnify]

Instantly liked and subscribed, was an absolute pleasure to watch. It is really good to know your career is in education, although I (of course) can't point to talent or training or ehatever else, I can say you are a GREAT communicator, what a privilege it is to be able to watch you.

I'm completely new to the channel, but want to point out something is wonky in your audio chain - knowing nothing else but the final result, if I were to make any recommendation would be for you to convert the stereo to mono, as many do in the podcast - youtube - social media production environment.

[alvarosanchezp]

Congrats for the video. I 100% agree with everything you said about teaching OCaml. My favorite algorithm, if I had to choose one, would be A*.

[Javx]

I’m 38 and I work for a tech company. Although I dont build complex stuff I have learned so much and I was never a good student or be the best at math. But, I’m really curious and I like to solve problems and put all the pieces together. I couldn’t go to a fancy University, I wish I could but I’m from a 3rd world country and everything I’ve learned is bc my curiosity. I like your videos

[freedom_aint_free]

Amazing video, thanks ! Theorem Proving brought me here !

[boopgoop]

Personally I agree with teaching functional languages before other languages
1. It teaches you thing more systematically, I dont know how many times Algebraic types have saved me in hours of debugging and helped me write code which handles edge cases at compile time
2. Those who say math is not needed for programming are only right for applications which do not go into under the abstraction layers. Everything below the api call is rigourous computer science and mathematics. Functional languages help here by making students think in terms of a more mathematical approach rather than loops and sideeffects which therefore makes it more proveable and testable.
Sidenote -
After leaving the functional paradigm i find myself write much cleaner and readable and most importantly testable code which is far more important then learning tech stacks, code is meant for humans to read and machines to interpret, functional language provide a stepping stone for good software engineering practices without the need for "Design Patterns".

[TheDmviper]

This is the first video I've watched of yours and enjoyed the unique perspective on Computer Science it gave compared to other YouTube videos on CS. At 8:14 you described the exact problem I have found myself struggling with. I absolutely love the mathematics and beauty of Computer Science, but I don't have the "engineering spirit" or "desire to build things" that I see in the great programmers I look up to. I would love if you would give advice or your opinion on where people in Computer Science who find themselves more like mathematicians and less like engineers might find success in their careers following their degree.

[huntsfromshadow]

Well it's time to learn Ocaml. I know when I took CS at Georgia Tech we didn't learn functional first. But we learned a *lot* of languages over the 4 years. Everything from Smalltalk, C, Java to JVM assembler. With such a foundation it makes picking up new langues much easier.

[replikvltyoutube]

Thank you for nice explanation, however it would be cool if you could redo audio for the video to be available for all viewers

[diptammukhopadhyay]

Thanks for the great explanation. My questions that I will love to hear the answer is why C and C++ are often referred as same but they have different syntaxes like Printf in C and Count in C++ and Is there some other fundamental differences between these two??

[MatthewPherigo]

You inverted one of your audio channels. Because of this, when the two are summed to a single channel, they cancel out. So when I take out one AirPod, it goes completely silent. :)

[eitanseitchik]

This is the same at University of Pennsylvania, im learning it right now!

[swagatochatterjee]

Cambridge teaches OCaml instead of Haskell, simply because they want you to learn Coq and not Agda, despite Haskell being way way way way cooler than OCaml. Feuds aside, great points! Like I am always astonished, how people are so comfortable with learning hard topics like Inheritance and Gang of Four Design Patterns, but are always freaking away from simple and beautiful constructs like Functors and Monads!

[pif]

The real reason is that later they can cry when they are forced to code in JS or python

[zakariaibrahim]

why doesn't this channel have a million subscribers ?