WebSharper: Make web apps in F# • Hacker News Board

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#21

Post by solomatov » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:11 AM UTC

_stephan wrote: post #16

solomatov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid support, tools, there're plenty of companies which follow this business model. Extjs, Vaadin, Typesafe, etc. I understand that they want to make a money, however, using their license is unacceptable risk, especially taking into account there're comparable alternatives. I'd rather use GWT/TypeScript/Scala.js, than proprietary framework which I won't be able to work with if they changed license to something unacce…

If you worry about such hypothetical licence or price changes, you could also contact the company and negotiate a custom licence/contract.

Usually, such companies have quite high price for such contracts and I think it's not worth is. While technically it might be superior, it has small user base, smaller talent pool to hire from, less books/documentation. All this happens because people want to make money in an old fashioned way.

The better option is to use, the most popular open source tool which in this area is GWT or TypeScript.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#22

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:11 AM UTC

gagege wrote: post #2

This looks super interesting. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. At first I thought it was similar to Classic ASP or JSPs, but after looking at some the examples, it's more like a JS framework in that it generates HTML dynamically with client side code. But, the thing that really looks cool to me is the interop between client and server that you can do. You can use the exact same "type Person = {Name:stri…

It's a F#-to-JS compiler, a UI framework, and an RPC system all built into one. Script# is similar, for C#, but I don't think it got that far? MS did start "Project Volta" IIRC but then gave up on it. There's also FunScript: http://funscript.info/ but that seems more focused only on the JS generation part.

I don't know why Micrsoft doesn't buy these guys and deliver this as a core solution. I'd guess it's because it's not on C#, and MS marketing doesn't know what to do with F#. They want to pigeonhole it as "F# is a special language for like, scientists and stuff. Don't worry, it ain't got nothing on C#." And hey, with enough time and resources, C# may catch up on some of the things. With Rosyln, I think it'd be easier to make a C# WebSharper thing.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#23

Post by MichaelGG » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:19 AM UTC

macca321 wrote: post #14

It's well intentioned, but this project is destined to go nowhere fast. Abstracting away web development and http has been tried again and again, and always ends up being more hassle than plain ol' HTML+JS+HTTP. Then you've limited yourself to interop with the js libraries they've provided leaky wrappers over, or you can write your own leaky wrapper if you want to use coolnewthing.js you saw on github. And to cap it…

It's been around for a few years. I was able to use it to quickly whip up some sorta-complicated UIs for some internal tools. I despise JS, and have spent hours of time fixing simple casing errors or other things that static typing would fix. Plus F# the language is quite superior to JS, so I don't feel icky while working on it.

The other benefit is that I can use all the same type definitions, so I don't need to write some generator or wrapper around my XHR functions - it just works.

It's quite easy to just drop out into pure JS if you feel the need. And defining wrappers is actually very very simple. For example:

  []
  let foo (a: string) (b: int) = ()

Doesn't Google use a Java-based system to do essentially the same thing (GWT)?

But you're right that if you are already happy with JS then there's a lot less reason to pick it up.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#24

Post by zzen » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:48 AM UTC

I might be missing a point, but how is this different from tried-and-failed GWT?

Apart, obviously, in language of choice.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#25

Post by ianlevesque » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:51 AM UTC

zzen wrote: post #24

I might be missing a point, but how is this different from tried-and-failed GWT? Apart, obviously, in language of choice.

To be fair, F# vs. Java is more than a trivial difference.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#26

Post by RussianCow » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 12:56 AM UTC

solomatov wrote: post #10

The project is really great, however license is really bad. A modern framework, should be open source under liberal license. Licenses like this worked in 90s, but currently they don't work.

If you don't like the license, don't use the framework. It's that simple. Charging for commercial licenses for libraries is a perfectly valid business strategy, and I can see lots of F# developers paying for this.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#27

Post by zoomerang » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 1:26 AM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #19

Another monolithic framework that will likely catch some unsuspecting CTO or director and ultimately be his demise, or someone who doesn't want to learn javascript (such people still exist, sadly).

Out of curiosity, have you tried F#?

It's a substantially nicer language than Javascript, and there's a lot of problem domains that are far easier solved in it.

People wouldn't use it because they don't want to learn Javascript. They'd use it because they don't want to use Javascript, on account of knowing better.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#28

Post by Rapzid » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 2:07 AM UTC

This looks very interesting in the same way as Clojurescript but with F# and potentially a smoother experience.

Has anyone used this that can provide some insight into it? Does it work with entity framework? OWIN? What's the story with the F# to javascript compilation; did they invent that or is it another project? Who are these people?

I think it's a shame that the C#/.NET ecosystem can't seem to have FOSS nice things because it really hampers stuff gaining traction. However I find the open source license for this is very clear and generous; I still can't seem to figure out if ServiceStack is safe to use :| This should allow for learning the framework and providing nice things to the community, and then the licensing seems reasonable compared to the value proposition for working on commercial software.

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#29

Post by RichardFord » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 2:15 AM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #19

Another monolithic framework that will likely catch some unsuspecting CTO or director and ultimately be his demise, or someone who doesn't want to learn javascript (such people still exist, sadly).

Sadly? If COBOL was the lingua franca of the web would it be sadly?

Re: WebSharper: Make web apps in F#

#30

Post by lstamour » Sat, Oct 04, 2014, 2:18 AM UTC

n72 wrote: post #15

Is this an arms length Jetbrains thing? If not, it seems awfully odd that its name is so close to Resharper and the parent company is called IntelliFactory, which is so close to IntelliJ. I guess there's nothing wrong with that. Just odd.

Ignoring, of course, that (a) they've probably used or heard of ReSharper and (b), both F# and C# pronounce the hash as "sharp"? ;-) I suppose it could be confusing but it wasn't the first thing I thought of...