[Mozart Oz Users] Mozart documentation -- proposal to simplifyit

[Torbjörn Lager]

I personally don't think the Tutorial is a very good entry point to Oz.
It is too long already, and contains a lot of material that is difficult
for many readers/students, and perhaps also some bad advice (like the
use of the dis-construct which could scare away a bench-marking Prolog
programmer very quickly -- almost did for me until I realized 'choice'
was a much better choice...). Also, since it is far from finished, it
can only become longer, and then it will soon start to 'compete' with
the Models book.

I would like to suggest another approach. Oz is a multi-paradigm
programming language, so there should really be multiple entry points
into Oz. (Really, Oz is unique in that there *can* be multiple entry
points!) These could be small documents, around 20-30 pages each: 

- Oz for Java programmers
- Oz for Prolog programmers
- Oz for Python programmers
- Oz for Smalltalk programmers
- Oz for Ruby programmers
- Oz for Lisp programmers
- 'Oz for Dummies' 
- etc.

Each 'Oz for XXX programmers' document could contain a gentle
introduction to the Oz language by way of comparing with the XXX
programming language. Besides, many of them documents would be able to
share some text and example code, so the effort of writing them would
perhaps not be that great. 

The user community could have a role to play here, as I'm sure there are
competent XXX programmers in the crowd, that would be capable (with a
little help from the Oz developers) of comparing XXX and Oz on a level
which is interesting and useful to the typical XXX programmer. 

Each 'Oz for XXX programmers' document could also contain a Beyond-XXX
section ('Beyond Prolog', 'Beyond Python', etc.) that shows the power of
the *other* paradigms (which are different depending on where you are
coming from...) and the power of combining paradigms. Each document
could provide a pointer to the Models book, for those who want to learn
more.

This would be a way to steal away lots of people from other languages
:-) Just send the documents to the relevant comp.lang.XXX groups
(comp.lang.prolog, comp.lang.java, etc.) and wait. In fact, they could
be posted there on an regular basis, since they are (in a way) relevant
to the user groups in question. 

Regarding the Models book. I think it's a truly wonderful book and I
wish Peter and Seif would never stop adding interesting ideas,
comparisons and examples to it. I will certainly buy a hard copy when it
gets out. In fact, if they add another 500 pages to it, I will buy two
copies, because then it will become to heavy to carry around :-)

And you guys writing about NLP in Oz, please don't stop. I will buy your
book too, I promise :-)

Cheers,
Torbjörn
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Torbjörn Lager                  Computational Linguist
Department of Linguistics       Uppsala University
S-751 20 Uppsala                Sweden
Phone: +46 18 471 7860          http://stp.ling.uu.se/~torbjorn/
----------------------------------------------------------------
-
Please send submissions to users at mozart-oz.org
and administriva mail to users-request at mozart-oz.org.
The Mozart Oz web site is at http://www.mozart-oz.org/.