> The single biggest obstacle a beginner hits with any language is not the conceptual understanding. It is the install.
Is that _really_ the case? I find it very unlikely (not just in an OCaml context).
Is that _really_ the case? I find it very unlikely (not just in an OCaml context).
A criticism like “I didn’t understand recursive functions” is a student problem. A criticism like “the instructions to install the environment never worked” is much more clearly a problem of the instructions. Even if, as you said, there are subtleties.
I will maintain that the only way the install process is actually the most difficult part for the student is if they are already a competent programmer. Which seems unlikely for a class like this.
You have to precisely follow a sequence of instructions without the experience to understand their purpose, or any idea of how to fix things if you make a mistake.
Web technology is an exception to this. People already have a web browser, and ignoring mobile devices, browsers come with a js REPL.
Still, I don't know if such things are the biggest obstacles, I remember the conceptual hurdle of the for loop syntax being pretty difficult to overcome. (I crashed my friend's server once with a very long loop echoing stuff each iteration that I might have tried opening in multiple tabs at once too.)
I've also seen such initial setup hurdles justified as filters: if you can't handle this, well, programming is full of such obstacles (bigger, smaller, or about the same size left unstated), so maybe it's for the best you just give up now since you probably won't make it. I generally don't like that excuse, and appreciate that getting into programming has been made so easy, but at the same time when a lot of effort has been made into making something so easy (even if not quite as easy as it could be, or as easy as something else) and people still bounce off their first setup difficulty, I sympathize with those who think good riddance, especially if the person isn't an absolute beginner. The horse and water adage always applies.