French math-fag here. I'll have to learn/use Caml this year.

>>8618641
>French math-fag here.
Kek.

It's pushed heavily by French academia because your state and industry sank a lot of money into it's development, there is no good reason to use it besides politics.

It's not a bad language per se, there as some interesting and big projects in it, but you rely A LOT on libraries written by (french) PhD students who no longer care about it and abandoned them. Also less tool support and libraries and support via community than Scala, Haskell or even LISP.

>>8618641
i had to learn and use it a few years ago, its a shit one, really annoying language, its useless since its only used for education, and has no real practical application, just do it, and do worry, in a few years you'll be doing real programming with java or C++

>>8618754
do not* worry

It's a good introduction to functional programming. The syntax is very similar to Haskell's.

The choice of language doesn't really matter until you get to applications. As longs as it's just for educational purposes, Caml will teach you a lot of concepts, and you won't have a need for huge library support anyways, so there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

>>8618754
>you'll be doing real programming with java
real shit, amirite?

if you are in a science related field, it's gonna be C++, Python or Fortran. Mathematica/Matlab for smaller tasks.

>>8618641
>OCaml
>not coq

Incidentally, I always heard French math education has really, really high standard. How does the average student study to survive the system there? They must be doing something different than the rest of the world.

>>8618778
You forgot C and Matlab.

>>8618641
Honestly if you're into math, you're probably gonna love it. Besides, if you're in prepa, you're not gonna be doing rocket science with it.

>>8618810
>not coq
The CS guys in my uni learned coq in their first year lol (which is like junior year to you anglos). But they're not really comparable languages.

>How does the average student study to survive the system there?
They adapt, really. I've never understood why the powers that be are so insistent on discarding things from the curricula.
There are always going to be people who breeze through class, a lot of average people and some people who don't care or don't get it.
Having a higher standard just ensures that the average guy gets a lot out of it, and that's exactly what happens in prepa.
Many of these kids aren't geniuses. Most did well in high school, which doesn't mean anything since high school curricula have nothing challenging in them.
Still, after two years, all of them have some rudiments of classical physics (mechanics, optics, waves, EM), and a good grounding in classical math (a lot of linear algebra, basic analysis and topology and some probability).
As for the recipe, high standards, quality teachers and most of all hard work: several pages of problem sets for each chapter (one roughly every three weeks), home assignments every week, 4-hour written exams every week and two 1-hour oral exams every week.

>>8618811
>>8618754
and C#

L'informatique en prépa est une blague, anon.
Heureusement, en grande école, c'est génial.

Caml est une saloperie.