OCaml from the Very Beginning

This is a kind of minimalistic introduction. Nothing wrong with that. But it is by no means the complete language. Just the first steps for a complete OCaml beginner with some programming experience. Overall recommended.Pros:- contains all the essential things to introduce the language- has an extensive set of exercises with solutions at the end of the book- each chapter is shortly reviewed at the end- mostly clear explanationsCons:- some of the chapter titles should be better descriptive, it is not easy to find things- you may have to do the exercises to really get the best out of this book. I hardly ever do that. I exercise by trying to use the language as soon as possible.- it introduces only OCaml, it does not say much about functional programming and its virtues.My copy of the book is filled with my own handwritten notes and comments, the chapter titles have been extended. Then it is more useful. I never read programming books cover to cover, I always pick things.OCaml is one of the best functional languages I know. Of course, this is my personal opinion.

This is truly an introductory treatment of the language; a tour of rudiments. If you've done *any* OCaml, this is *not* your book.It has exercises to work, with answers in an appendix. You can code along with this text. It's nicely progressive. Stuff, for the most part; no fluff. Note that you are on your own, however, as far as getting OCaml installed on your machine.If you already hack OCaml at all, move along. But if you're outside looking in and you want a well-written, hand-holding, easily read ice-breaker, then I would heartily recommend. Seriously, if you have any doubts about your capacity to get started with OCaml, this will lay your fears to rest -- assuming you get it installed OK (don't worry, it's easy too https://ocaml.org/docs/install.html).

Starts off a little slow if you've worked with other programming languages, but serves as a pretty solid introduction to OCaml as well as programming in general. I did notice some minor "printing" errors in the Kindle version with some graphics missing the graphics that should be there and also some minor mathematical errors (i.e. 0! is returned as 0 in one of the answers when it should be 1), but the overall structure is excellent for beginners and easy to understand.

This is a very well written introduction to OCaml. Even if your principal programming language is C++ or Java or Python or something else, OCaml is still a good language to study for a few months because it really encourages you to think RECURSIVELY about your algorithms. Most of the big languages these days emphasize iteration, which is just fine but that can lead to very complex code that is difficult to read and maintain. In many cases recursion is preferable to iteration, and OCaml will really help you to think recursively because of its emphasis on recursively defined functions. I love it! The language is awesome. And this book is also really, really good. Highly recommended.

A very good and simple introduction to the basics of this amazing language. Short, easily digested chapters introduce each new concept. More advanced concepts are only briefly covered such as modules. Functors and OO are not covered. Having said that, this must be the easiest way of getting into the language or getting an introduction to the language. This book will prepare you to tackle the more comprehensive treatises such as " Real World OCaml: Functional programming for the masses " (also highly recommended) with ease.

Excellent book for the intended scope. This will get you from zero knowledge regarding OCaml to enough to piece together simple programs and go on from there. Probably a good introduction to the language for beginners as well, but as someone who's used a number of (primarily dynamically-typed) languages extensively, this was an excellent, quick, concise (perhaps my favorite attribute of the book), introduction to the language.

Easy to understand and practical. I found it to be a good supplement to "Real world ocaml".

Complete but simple to read. Very usefull book for early beginners of this language. It is perhaps the missing book on OCaml. OCaml OOP not enough covered.

Coming from a Python background and wanting to learn OCaml, I have found this book to be very accessible as a tutorial - far more so than the Real World OCaml which, though excellent, is dive-into-the-deepend stuff quite fast, and also mixed in with too many Jane Street specifics too soon. Here is a great book to get you started on the learning curve of OCaml. As the other reviewers said, it's deceptively easy going, but actually these light chapters are quite dense if you go through some of the latter questions at the end of each.What I like most about it is that it has that concise, incremental, orthogonally organised feeling that mirrors what I expect to get out of functional programming itself.One could argue that it is a mite expensive for a 190 page book that uses a lot of whitespace (that's a positive for organization and readability, as an aside), but then OCaml is not really mainstream and one has to accept that this book will have a relatively low print run, and therefore I won't begrudge it a star on this point as I would much rather pay a few pounds more and have this book exist.

With a background in imperative language, I found it is quite hard to learn functional language. I've tried many OCaml tutorial, and found this is the best one for me. It was written for first year graduates without any programming experience, so it gives me a clear picture of the basis of functional programming.

Great start!

easy understanding

Good for starting out. I am a little disappointed 'cause I got farther by reading the online documentation.