Beyond Functional Programming In Haskell:AnIntroductionToOCaml

Date: 2006-12-21

Time: 11:45

Room: BBL room 471

Speaker: Michiel Overeem

Title: Beyond Functional Programming In Haskell: An Introduction To OCaml (slides)

Abstract

At the Universiteit Utrecht, the programming language Haskell is used to teach students the concepts of functional programming. The beautiful concepts of strong typing, laziness, and higher-order functions are taught. There is, however, more to functional programming than Haskell.

In this talk the functional programming language OCaml will be introduced. Just like Haskell, OCaml is strongly typed and has higher-order functions. Expressions are by default evaluated in a strict way, although expressions can be evaluated lazily by means of annotations. OCaml offers the programmer a very powerful module system, which enables the programmer to parameterize modules. This leads to a new level of modularization of your applications. On top of the functional features, OCaml supports the object-oriented paradigm. This gives you the opportunity to combine higher-order functions and objects, which is a powerful combination.

This presentation provides a gentle introduction to OCaml for the Haskell programmer, and discusses the most exciting OCaml features: strictness, objects, and modules. Let's see whether Haskell should remain your functional language of choice!