OCaml from the Very BeginningJohn Whitington
OCaml from the Very Beginning
by John Whitington · first published 2013
11mentions
6recommended by
10HN commenters
2013–2025first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A gentle, example-driven introduction to OCaml for beginners and newcomers to the language. It serves as a good starting point before moving on to more advanced material, and it is a joy to learn from.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…from wherever I last left off on any computing device I have handy, including my tablets or smartphone. So far, my learning experience has been a joy. If you decide on OCaml, Whitington also wrote "OCaml From the Very Beginning" (http://ocaml-book.com), which available via free pdf or HTML thanks to the OCaml Software Foundation, and looks to be structured similar to his Haskell book. Hope this helps.
on “Should I Haskell or OCaml?” ↗I'm just about to start a course that uses OCaml for teaching. Any book or website recommendations? The textbooks are "OCaml from the very beginning" and "More OCaml: Algorithms, Methods & Diversions"
on “MariOCaml: HTML5 Mario, written exclusively in OCaml” ↗…always fun to learn a new language, especially one with the 20 year provenance of OCaml! The modularity features that OCaml provides are really key to the core of Mirage. I'd suggest starting with: * OCaml from the very beginning: http://ocaml-book.com/ * Real World OCaml (shameless plug: author). Freely available online: https://realworldocaml.org * The OCaml.org website itself: http://ocaml.org/learn/ (99 problems is really…
on “Mirage v2.0: a recap of the new features” ↗OCaml from the Very Beginning is amazing beginner material.
on “Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998)” ↗…from. I took a similar path years ago and I found your situation akin to mine. The documentation is spotty, full of gaps, particularly for a new comer; although I found some reasonable books that helped "OCaml from the very beginning, 2013" and "Real world OCaml 2nd edition, 2022". I love OCaml but I don't see myself going back to it. I love re-reading old code that has been cleaned up. It reads like perfect design. It's satisfying.…
on “My First Experience with OCaml” ↗…OCaml community was dead - or at least brain-dead. It appealed to one type of learner: Someone who just needs to see type signatures and has no interest in examples of how it could be used. After reading OCaml From The Very Beginning my stance softened. Learning PURE OCaml is a must. (if you want to do AoC with it). You may find yourself bringing in Core or Base, after you've got a good idea of a solution. It's definitely a fun language…
on “OCaml Syntax Sucks (2016)” ↗I've read some part of the book Real World OCaml, by Yaron Minsky and Anil Madhavapeddy. https://dev.realworldocaml.org/ I also saw this book OCaml from the Very Beginning by John Whitington. https://ocaml-book.com/ I have not read that one yet. But I know about the author, from having come across his PDF tools written in OCaml, called CamlPDF, earlier. https://github.com/johnwhitington/camlpdf…
on “Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?” ↗…are made in different compiler versions so it would cause frustration for a new reader if they come across a disconnect. I suspect the same is true for other languages listed. The most recent books are 'OCaml from the very beginning' [1] (released earlier this year) and 'Real World OCaml' [2] (released a few weeks ago). You can find these and other OCaml books listed at: http://ocaml.org/learn/books.html [1] http://ocaml-book.com/…
on “Functional programming books review” ↗…'Real World Ocaml' beta book, but I've already known and used the language for quite some time before, so I can't really judge which book would be better for a beginner. Take this with a grain of salt: "OCaml from the very beginning" seems to focus more on teaching the language itself. If you've never used OCaml before then this might be the place to start. "Real World OCaml" in addition to teaching the basics of the language has…
on “Real World OCaml” ↗Although not a book per-se, the tutorials on the OCaml.org site are based on the old ocaml-tutorial.org ones, which is among the ones I used to get started (there was no Real World OCaml, or OCaml from the Very Beginning at the time): http://ocaml.org/tutorials/ For future reference, all books should be listed here: http://ocaml.org/books.html
on “Real World OCaml” ↗I have been checking out the online books "OCaml from the very beginning" and "Real World OCaml".
on “Learn OCaml” ↗