Caml

Caml Homepage: http://caml.inria.fr/

This is the genealogy of the programming language Caml:

Caml is a child of ML.
Caml was born in year 1987.
It became Caml 2-6.1 in year 1991.
It became Caml 3.1 in year 1993.
Then it begat Objective Caml in year 1996.

This genealogy is brought to you by the Programming Languages Genealogy Project.

California Math League, which gives challenging math tests to 6-12th grades for fun (and bragging rights). In high school, there are 6 tests each year, with 6 math problems each, ranging from almost trivial to damn near impossible and including algebra and geometry. (All the problems are solvable without higher math than that, but the reasoning skills developed in higher math are almost required to do well.) Almost anyone can get number 1; I am darn proud when I get number 6, and I pride myself in my math skills. (The math teacher at my school gets number 6 right about half the time.) This and the AMC 10 and 12 tests (formerly both the AHSME) are great for students who want to stretch their mathematical skills, and make sure those same skills can be put to good use on a college application. (The tests provide quantitative measurements of mathematical skill, which colleges like; high performers on these tests get awards, which colleges like even more.)

Contrary to popular opinion that nothing worthwhile is ever written in non-imperative languages, CAML, or rather, the OCAML implementation of it, it used to in the p2p file-sharing program MLDonkey, a free client for the eDonkey network.

Of course, to those opposed to the legally-precarious topic of file-sharing, it still true that nothing worthwhile has ever been written in a non-imperative language. However, it still remains that the eDonkey2000 network is probably the file-sharing network.

But I digress.

This has always been one of the flaws of MLDonkey, since anyone who wanted to compile the program from CVS would have to have a OCAML compiler and the OCAML version of the gtk library. From personal experience it is slightly less fun than installing Gentoo — the latter has the thrill of installing an entire system.

I'm reliably informed (by the website as cited in the top wu) that OCAML is the best thing since sliced bread; I have yet to meet one single programmer who works extensively with the language.