Martin Weber <Ephaeton / gmx.net> wrote in message news:<20021217154725.GC5693 / phaeton.entropie.net>...
....
> > languages) and have narrowed it down to either Ocaml and Haskell. It'd 
> > be great if any of you could share your experiences with either one or 
....
> I'd look at scheme (scsh e.g.), too, before you decide for one.

I've no experience with Ocaml, little with Haskell, and a moderate
amount with Scheme.  I'd choose Haskell over Scheme; Haskell's typing
is sometimes irritating in that it adds an additional level of
complexity and confusion for beginners, but Scheme's notation, IMHO,
is a heavyweight source of irritation that overrides any other
concerns.

To quote the old joke:

  The C programmer is found runnig down the hall waving a stack of
printout saying "I'll bet you can't guess what *this* does!"

  The Ada programmer is found in a corner, bent over an Ada manual,
trying to figure out if it is legal to add two Integers.

  The Scheme programmer is found hunched 2 inches from his monitor
mumbling: "97, 98, 99... damn, where's that missing parenthesis??"

(In the original, it was probably a Lisp programmer in place of the
Scheme programmer...)