I worked with it and while its technically a probably a good language it's nowhere near as easy to get shit done with it as C#.
Why is not easy to get things done?
Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#62Most of the programmers do programming for a living. They are not passionate programmers who like to learn new languages. They care about getting things done. Since Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, Ruby and Rails, PHP are all popular and have huge library ecosystem around them, for most of the 9 to 5 programmers, there is little incentive learn any functional language. Also since all popular and dominant languages are e…
Scala may be worth a look. You can write libraries using it and pop them into Java code like it's no big deal. There's a few caveats and gotchas, but overall I've been pretty happy with what it's allowed us to do (Apache Spark in Scala especially is lovely).
Scala's future is very unclear, pick Kotlin instead.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#63I think it's two things. If you write a lot of F# then if anyone leaves you need to replace them and it's harder than finding a C# developer. Secondly most of the libraries you interop with are C# and so you have to go through interop which is more annoying.
C# interop doesn't seem that hard: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/completeness-seamles... Also, from what I've read it's easy enough to use F# code from C# if you wrap it in an object. F# is multiparadigmatic, including support for FP and OOP.
I think interop is not hard, but F# still enforces functional way over imperative. Write imperative code on Scala is easier then write imperative code on F#
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#64As a long-time advocate of functional programming, I was once asked after a talk what is the "best" FP language to learn. Since I'm known as a Haskell/Scala/ML person, I surprised much of the audience by answering that I thought F# was the best entry point. What I did not say, however, was that I think that Windows is a challenging environment for anyone who is used to Linux/Mac -- and this includes the "open source"…
Interesting.
To me, Windows has eclipsed both MacOS and Linux as the best dev environment. It's caught up in shell and the whole ecosystem of tools completely blows away what exists on MacOS and Linux.
Windows is also a lot better than the other two in keyboard shortcut support.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#65(I'm an experienced functional (Haskell) programmer)
I have no interest in F# because I don't want to work in Windows (and the dotNet platform in general).
Yes I could probably make F#/dotNet work in Linux, but at that point I have Haskell, (and SML and OCaml and Erlang). Net, net, in my dev/deploy environment, F# confers no benefit (as compared to the alternatives)
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
i didnt say that people dont use it BECAUSE its good. that its good simply doesnt matter to them. almost nobody is using erlang. one of the best languages out there.
Betamax was superior to VHS. VHS won. Best is only one aspect. As was said elsewhere here a few times, functional programming is a different paradigm for most people, and learning new stuff is hard, especially when deadlines are at play.
> Betamax was superior to VHS.
Actually, that's a myth.
One of the reasons why Betamax lost is because a tape could only contain one hour of film, so you needed at least two tapes for a single movie. VHS didn't have this limitation.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I have tried using F# in my company but gave up after a while. Reasons: - it's hard to hire people - most libraries are written for OO style so most code will be written OO style - most sample code is written in C# - C# is a pretty nice language. Does F# really provide an advantage? - will MS abandon F#? I really would like to see a clear case for F#. When you consider factors like hiring and existing ecosyst…
Data wrangling is a really clear case. I do a tonne of this and it's so much easier in FP.
I can see that. I wish I was in a more self contained environment. But most of us have to glue many different systems together and then FP is harder to pull off.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#68In corporate, especially in MS shops, to modify an old adage, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing C#". For side projects, I'd imagine most people working on those would rather do something not Microsoft-specific. For me, I've done plenty of freelance projects in F# over the past few years and enjoy it. I've done about two years worth of projects in Clojure, and about a half year in Scala, and F# was the nicest of the…
I love doing side projects in C#. I'm in it all day at work so I don't need to spend hours figuring out how to configure my local environment or why I'm getting a blank page (horrors from my early days in PHP). If I'm trying to get something out the door to get that sweet, sweet AdSense money, it's going to be in C# unless a static POC site will do.
If the side project is to learn something new, the language is usually what I'm trying to learn, so it's harder to pick what to build rather than which language to use.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#69I'm a professional C# developer and while I have dabbled in F# it isn't where I ended up when using functional programming languages. I ended up with Elixir and the main reason why is moving off of the .NET framework. There is nothing wrong with .NET but after doing it for a living for 5 years I wanted a change. I really enjoy Elixir and can't see myself going "back" (I was never fully there) into F#.
Re: Ask HN: Why isn't F# more popular?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I have tried using F# in my company but gave up after a while. Reasons: - it's hard to hire people - most libraries are written for OO style so most code will be written OO style - most sample code is written in C# - C# is a pretty nice language. Does F# really provide an advantage? - will MS abandon F#? I really would like to see a clear case for F#. When you consider factors like hiring and existing ecosyst…
> it's hard to hire people Many other commentators said something like this, so it seems to me that: Not many people are using F#, because it's hard to find employer who needs F#. And employers don't seek for F# programmers, because there are too few of them.
Moreover, there seem to be no big codebases written in F#.