I ...picked up the utility of giving students a fast overview, stressing the most commonly used constructs [and idioms] rather than the complete syntax. ... In writing this [short] guide to ML programming, I have thus departed from the approach found in many books on the language. I tried to remember how things struck me at first, the analogies I drew with conventional languages, and the concepts I found most useful in getting started.

— Jeffrey D. Ullman, Elements of ML Programming (1997)