Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why F#?

batsov.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 424 posts

Re: Why F#?

#121

Post by kowalgta »

gwbas1c wrote: post #51

> Why F#? I'm kinda wondering if anyone here with decent C#/.net experience can give their version of the answer? --- The article really didn't answer its own question. It basically says "How" instead of "Why"... ...Which as someone who's spent over 20 years in C#, and tends to advocate for "functional" style, leaves me with more questions than answers!

I've worked with .net professionally for almost 20 years. At the beginning with C# while last decade almost exclusively with F#.

F# is just a better language. Simpler, more concise, more readable with stronger type safety. I will never go back to writing C# as I'm finding it too frustrating at times and unproductive.

Re: Why F#?

#122

Post by miloandmilk »

neonsunset wrote: post #67
miloandmilk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this, I spent many months going through the most recent books on F# including one which the latest version was only released last year I think. They all seem to try and shield you from the fact that you are much better placed if coming from C# (which everyone seems to refer to as .net these days) and have a solid understanding of the .net class library. All the main web frameworks sit on top of asp.net and prett…

What is the issue with learning C# alongside it, if only the bits necessary to improve the F# experience? Both are excellent languages.

They are both excellent languages, I just literally don't have the time to commit to do that at the moment.

I think if I ever have time for another go I would learn enough to be proficient in c# before diving back in.

Re: Why F#?

#123

Post by malakai521 »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #110
smoothdeveloper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In C#, you can't use the await keyword in a non async method, so I find the argument short sighted.

I don't see how that changes things. You'd have to async it all the way to the top but the syntax is still cleaner than F#. If you're using an Asp.Net controller you just declare the handler as async Task and it's fine. Even program main methods can be async these days

The syntax is exactly the same. You have `var x = await` in C# and `let! x =` in F#

The controller handler is also the same. It will be marked with `async` keyword in C# and `task` CE in F#

Re: Why F#?

#124

Post by kqr »

raphinou wrote: post #107

F# was for me the best functional language when I looked at rewriting a Ruby on Rails app. I wanted to go with a functional language, as it seems to better fit my thinking and reasoning, and I looked at Haskell, Ocaml, Scala, F#. Being a stranger to Microsoft technologies, F# was the least likely to be chosen, but easily became the first choice. Haskell's purity made it hard to adopt (for me), Ocaml's ecosystem is su…

Curious since you don't expand on it on the blog: in what way did Haskell's purity make it difficult to you?

Having used Haskell in production for a bit now, I don't even notice its purity. Most functions are in some kind of I/O context making it similar as other languages, except with the option of running without I/O capabilities for functions that shouldn't need it.

Re: Why F#?

#125

Post by mike1o1 »

raphinou wrote: post #107

F# was for me the best functional language when I looked at rewriting a Ruby on Rails app. I wanted to go with a functional language, as it seems to better fit my thinking and reasoning, and I looked at Haskell, Ocaml, Scala, F#. Being a stranger to Microsoft technologies, F# was the least likely to be chosen, but easily became the first choice. Haskell's purity made it hard to adopt (for me), Ocaml's ecosystem is su…

There was a large group of folks that left Ruby on Rails for Elixir (even has a similar looking syntax), yet it wasn't on your list of languages to consider. Just curious, was there a particular reason?

Re: Why F#?

#126

Post by GiorgioG »

aaronmu wrote: post #85

I've been using F# professionally for the past seven years across different contexts. First in a small software shop and now while bootstrapping a SaaS company. Some observations: * It’s easier to attract smart developers to an F# project than to a [mainstream language] project. This was one of my driving beliefs when I introduced F# seven years ago. https://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html . This is probably just as tr…

As a 20+ year C# dev...where do I learn how to structure apps in F#? In C# my ASP.NET Controller might use a service (or a mediator) to execute some domain logic and that in turn will use a repository pattern (or EF DbContext) to update/query a database. How are dependencies injected in? It seems like there are multiple ways of going about it, but I don't have enough knowledge of F# to know 'the proper way' to do it.

Re: Why F#?

#127

Post by vlovich123 »

homebrewer wrote: post #106
jen20 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd call Rust a "niche language" any more (perhaps in ~2018) - it's in common use across many big technology companies.

It is extremely niche outside of this bubble.

F# will likely remain niche forever. It’s likely that Rust will not given its growing and accelerating adoption by Microsoft, Google and the Linux Kernel.

It just takes time to defeat the 40+ years of c and c++ dominance.

Re: Why F#?

#130

Post by breadwinner »

raphinou wrote: post #107

F# was for me the best functional language when I looked at rewriting a Ruby on Rails app. I wanted to go with a functional language, as it seems to better fit my thinking and reasoning, and I looked at Haskell, Ocaml, Scala, F#. Being a stranger to Microsoft technologies, F# was the least likely to be chosen, but easily became the first choice. Haskell's purity made it hard to adopt (for me), Ocaml's ecosystem is su…

Apache Spark, Delta Lake are written Scala. Being JVM based, it has a large ecosystem. Scala seems like a better choice than F#.
Post reply on HN