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Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

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Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#31

Post by cjbgkagh »

gemstones wrote: post #3

This is a nicely written essay and, I think, completely wrong. (One person's experience here, just as a disclaimer.) I've interviewed a lot of functional candidates in a decade-long stint of functional programming professionally. My interview approach is always the same. All practical exercises, no leetcode here. You can do the exercises in the language you're most comfortable in. If I had to pick a language that pre…

I think F# programmers lack that gamut because they get comfortable in the eager execution type safe world and stay there with no particular reason to learn dynamic programming techniques. There is also the effect that it allows less advanced functional programmers to be productive so that in randomly sampling currently active functional programmers the F# programmer is less likely to be advanced.

Scala developers were referred to a Java refugees, Swift developers to Objective C refugees, and F# as C# refugees. A weird side effect of Microsoft doing a better job with C# is that there less of a push to F#. Plus F# by virtue of being in Dev Div had the core value proposition (Ocaml on .Net) undermined by the Win vs Dev Div internal battles that tried and failed to kill .Net.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#32

Post by muglug »

Progamming language evangelism is basically a zero-sum game.

Some languages don't really intrude on one another's territory — e.g. not that many people are rewriting Ruby programs in Rust — but some very directly compete.

So if you want to convince someone to use F#, you have to convince them it's significantly better than some other closely-related language. And that's hard!

I have a strong suspicion that the next decade will see a reduction in programming language diversity. JavaScript/TypeScript and Python will become even more popular, to the detriment of everything but Go, C++, and Rust.

Platform-specific languages like Swift will persevere, as will Java, which is unkillable, but the vast array of languages will become less vast.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#33

Post by cjbgkagh »

gemstones wrote: post #29
cjbgkagh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TypeProviders don't do well with messy JSON and are finicky at the best of time, the last thing I'd rely on during an interview. Depends on what you mean by messy? Non-conforming JSON? A custom FParsec parser might be able to sensibly extract the data. If it is conforming to JSON then you'd use normal F# code to work with the standard JSON parsers.

It’s syntactically valid JSON.

I don't know then, LinqToJson is a pretty good starting point for F#

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#34

Post by Semaphor »

muglug wrote: post #32

Progamming language evangelism is basically a zero-sum game. Some languages don't really intrude on one another's territory — e.g. not that many people are rewriting Ruby programs in Rust — but some very directly compete. So if you want to convince someone to use F#, you have to convince them it's significantly better than some other closely-related language. And that's hard! I have a strong suspicion that the next d…

> JavaScript/TypeScript and Python will become even more popular, to the detriment of everything but Go, C++, and Rust.

Why do you see the popularity of C# waning?

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#35

Post by local_crmdgeon »

muglug wrote: post #32

Progamming language evangelism is basically a zero-sum game. Some languages don't really intrude on one another's territory — e.g. not that many people are rewriting Ruby programs in Rust — but some very directly compete. So if you want to convince someone to use F#, you have to convince them it's significantly better than some other closely-related language. And that's hard! I have a strong suspicion that the next d…

Agreed. Tweaks: I don't think C++ is going to be relevant for much longer, Rust solves the problem space better.

Python ... maybe? It's so different than the rest, I can see it going the way of Ruby once AI bindings improve in other languages. I can also see Julia dominating the AI space.

The "better than X" languages though? C#, F#, Scala? Done. I don't even hear about Kotlin that much anymore, Java is starting to adopt the good stuff from them.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#36

Post by throwa18991900 »

keithnz wrote: post #8

just as true today as 2015 when the article was written, except C# got even better. While I like the F# language, I don't like the (understandably) abandonware of the small community. I've ported most of my F# stuff to C#, and it's not that much different in that you can program in a functional style in C#. Probably the nicest thing in F# that C# doesn't have is computation expressions.

For my domains personally the static math functions are still clunky to me in C#, and the forced compiler time inlining can really help some algorithms with massive perf gains (experienced firsthand) especially with some of the newer .NET features (e.g. ref's). IMO to me the nicest thing is the terse syntax, and that I need less IDE as a result. There just seems to be less refactoring tools required to get started and onboard people.

I think the abandonware thing is expected. But I think this is the cost of a language that is a child's to a main ecosystem and doesn't just apply to F#. Unless its specific to FP/the F# domain it will be written in C# or whatever the common language is for that platform. Ironically the language with the least features is the one to write in (LCD) so it targets the most people. Why would I just target one language on the platform when I can target all languages? Especially if I'm paying a team to write the library. Most bang for buck so to speak.

Hence most things in these side languages are either wrappers to make them more idiomatic and/or pattern libraries that are specific to the extra value add the language has and usually don't need to change much once implemented. I think that's fine and pragmatic, why reinvent something that works?

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#37

Post by xupybd »

I love F#, I use it professionally. But I agree with everything written in this post. I hate that F# is not a safe choice yet. I wish that it were but it doesn't have the critical mass. That means hiring others is not going to be as easy as finding an existing F# developer.

Functional programing is different. I don't think it's hard but it's not what most developers have spent years practicing. So there is a learning curve to get over.

Critical mass is a problem for all new languages and often it's not the best language that will win critical mass. It's the one that gets adopted for reasons that aren't always merit (see javascript).

I pick F# because it's easier for me to avoid silly mistakes. I find my code is easier to change and it's harder to write some classes of bugs. It's also very pleasant to use.

But C# is pretty good at all of these things, F# is just a little bit nicer. But that little bit comes at a big cost of being very different.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#38

Post by Fervicus »

gemstones wrote: post #3

This is a nicely written essay and, I think, completely wrong. (One person's experience here, just as a disclaimer.) I've interviewed a lot of functional candidates in a decade-long stint of functional programming professionally. My interview approach is always the same. All practical exercises, no leetcode here. You can do the exercises in the language you're most comfortable in. If I had to pick a language that pre…

> Implies that if someone just saw some code in F# and realized what people can do in it, they would be super impressed. I have not found that to be the case. If that's a general problem and not just a quirk of my personal experience, that has to be fixed first.

Maybe I am mistaken here, but it seems to me that the line you are quoting from the essay implies the opposite of what you said.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#39

Post by BSEdlMMldESB »

muglug wrote: post #32

Progamming language evangelism is basically a zero-sum game. Some languages don't really intrude on one another's territory — e.g. not that many people are rewriting Ruby programs in Rust — but some very directly compete. So if you want to convince someone to use F#, you have to convince them it's significantly better than some other closely-related language. And that's hard! I have a strong suspicion that the next d…

but also, some languages really overlap directly, like elixir and ruby, or C and java and javascript. so maybe is not "zero sum" between every langauge

and even more so for beginners, most languages only show their differences at a much deeper level.

Re: Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

#40

Post by NegativeLatency »

lmm wrote: post #6
gemstones wrote: post #3

This is a nicely written essay and, I think, completely wrong. (One person's experience here, just as a disclaimer.) I've interviewed a lot of functional candidates in a decade-long stint of functional programming professionally. My interview approach is always the same. All practical exercises, no leetcode here. You can do the exercises in the language you're most comfortable in. If I had to pick a language that pre…

I disagree on almost every count: it's a badly written essay, but it makes a valid point. > I've interviewed a lot of functional candidates in a decade-long stint of functional programming professionally. My interview approach is always the same. All practical exercises, no leetcode here. Does this mean that you're measuring, like, how fast someone can deploy a CRUD webapp in the given language? I can imagine F# woul…

Rails has generators you’re talking about not ruby, and I’ve seen and worked on some very maintainable rails apps.
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