FP Koans

"Of all the (31) languages I've been exposed to in this shootout , I've been most impressed with Ocaml, for a number of reasons. It wasn't the easiest for me to pick up the basics, but it was far from the hardest. I think that Ocaml's multi-paradigm features (Functional, Imperative and OO) make it a very practical and general purpose language. I'm generally impressed with its ease of use, speed, and the error detection of the compiler (due to its nice typing system). I also think it is great that Ocaml offers both a bytecode compiler and a native code compiler (for some platforms). Ocaml's support for Unix, objects and threads are all a big plus for me. Ocaml's compilers are also regarded as being very, very fast, which is nice for a programmer, as it reduces the edit/compile/debug cycle. The fact that it does garbage collection, and (in my tests) it produces code comparable in speed to C/C++ makes it very valuable to me as a programmer. Speed, elegance and programming safety. What more could a programmer ask for? Out of all the languages in the shootout, I can see Ocaml becoming my main development language of choice."

OCaml vs Ruby (with a bit of C++ and Java thrown in)
OCaml vs C++ (with a little Java thrown in) (here OCaml earns the moniker of "LFSP: Language designed For Smart People", as opposed to others, "LFM: Languages designed For the Masses" :)
More C++ deficiencies from an OCaml/functional-language pint of view
Experiences with using an uncommon language for large scale, real world development

Programming For Fun Challenge

1. Google's immortal cookie:
"Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number." -- Google: Big Brother of the Year

2003 Big Brother Awards

WOMDs
(Thanks to James)

"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." -- Bruce Feirstein

Gridlock

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt. --Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"

Just wrote up an example of how to derive types from an O'Caml statement.

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." --GW Bush

Why a German jew did not flee Nazi Germany while he still could

"No man escapes when freedom fails; the best men rot in filthy jails. And those who cried, 'Appease! Appease!', are hanged by those they tried to please." --Horace Mann

Word of the day:
lacuna: An empty space or a missing part; a gap: “self-centered in opinion, with curious lacunae of astounding ignorance” (Frank Norris)

Seven Lessons from the ICFP Programming Contest

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(Keep clicking "ENTER" until you hit the end)