[ocaml-biz] target demographics

[Martin Jambon]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Brian Hurt wrote:

> If Ocaml becomes popular in industry, this natural pressure will also make
> it popular in academia.  On the other hand, if Ocaml becomes popular as a
> first programming language, it won't become popular as a professional
> programming language.  Instead, students will grumble at being taught a
> "useless" first language, and will dump Ocaml for the "real" programming
> languages that Industry uses at their first chance.  The experiences of
> Pascal and Scheme confirm this.

This effect for OCaml is already very clear in France. Many
students in computer science (which is only a subset of the future
programmers) already practiced some OCaml during their studies, and when
you tell them that you develop a serious project in OCaml, they look
at you with a big smile which says: "You are too naive, OCaml is too
simple, it can't be used for industrial projects, but it reminds me of the
time when I was young and naive too. Now I am paid for working, so it
has to be uninteresting, boring and I must give up all my dreams".
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                (maybe this part is specific to
                                 the French)

Martin