On 2005-05-03, Daniel Carrera
Marcin just mentioned OCaml as another functional programming language I should keep in mind.
Can anyone offer an opinion on how Haskell and OCaml compare? Is OCaml as easy to learn as Haskell? Does it have much the same virtues?
I learned OCaml before learning Haskell. I'd say that there are probably no features OCaml has that Haskell lacks that are worth mentioning. Haskell seems to have a lot more useful, cool things than OCaml. The type systems are very similar fundamentally. OCaml has a very dated "feel" with both its syntax and its cumbersome build system. As much as people complain about I/O in Haskell, OCaml has one of the worst I/O interfaces I've ever seen. The OCaml standard library does not even permit a single file to be open Read/Write, and an input handle is a completely different type than an output handle. OCaml does, however, usually compile to a faster executable than Haskell does. Also, it has better tutorials for people coming from a traditional imperative background.