>whitespace is significant, like in Python hard pass
You never touch python code either?
Why F#?
261–270 of 424 posts
Re: Why F#?
#262> 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!
Everything is an expression (i.e. its an actual functional programming language), and along with it comes a different way of thinking about problems. Coupled with a really good type system which has discriminated unions, you'll have much fewer bugs. Pro tip: don't write F# like you would write C# - then you might as well write C#. Take the time to learn the functional primitives.
if I may elaborate on "everything is an expression," F# allows you to do things like (with apologies for being a tad rusty with the syntax)
let bar =
if foo then
7
else
11
let bar =
try
// code that might throw
7
with ex ->
11
Whereas in C# you have to do like
int bar;
if (foo) {
bar = 7;
} else {
bar = 11;
}
Except that most C# developers do
int bar = 0; // or some other default value`
This doesn't seem like a big deal given these examples. But it becomes a much bigger deal when the if/else grows super large, becomes nested, etc.
Re: Why F#?
#263I want to ask a weird question. I'd love to learn ASP.net but i can't bring myself to deal with Microsoft Windows and their tech. Is F# a way for me to learn enough NET to make some money?
> i can't bring myself to deal with Microsoft Windows and their tech
Even in a VM? Why not?
Re: Why F#?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is extremely niche outside of this bubble.
According to Stack Overflow developer survey [0] Rust is at 12.5%, roughly a half of C# or Java and a quarter of Python. Also more than twice Ruby. So definitely not niche. [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...
In my mind not niche means having jobs, and Rust has no jobs, not in any meaningful amount at least, and none at all in most countries. That puts it deep in the niche category for me.
Re: Why F#?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is best to just use task CE full-time unless you need specific behavior of async CEs. The author of the original comment, however, does not know this nor tried verifying whether F# actually works seamlessly with this nowadays (it does). Writing asynchronous code in F# involves less syntax noise than in C#. None of that boilerplate is required, F# should not be written that way at all.
I understand that you CAN do this, I'm saying that it makes your code look like shit and takes away some of the elegance of ML
[deleted]
Re: Why F#?
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is best to just use task CE full-time unless you need specific behavior of async CEs. The author of the original comment, however, does not know this nor tried verifying whether F# actually works seamlessly with this nowadays (it does). Writing asynchronous code in F# involves less syntax noise than in C#. None of that boilerplate is required, F# should not be written that way at all.
I understand that you CAN do this, I'm saying that it makes your code look like shit and takes away some of the elegance of ML
Are you saying you prefer Ocaml to F# or C# to F#? Your example was indeed inelegant but it is also poorly designed as you take 4 lines to reproduce a function that is already built in, people can poorly design code in any language.
Re: Why F#?
#267As a 20+ year C# developer I’ve tried several times to learn/use F#. Despite being interested in FP, my brain is having trouble figuring out how to structure my code in F#. In C# I’d either build a service (or use the mediator pattern) for the domain and a repository for data access. With F# it’s functions all the way down and it feels unnatural (as silly as that may sound).
That makes sense when one is used to the Visual Studio organization of solutions and projects, with some main method somewhere being the entry point, unless it's a WCF service or somesuch that gets run via a service manager.
I only used F# at its command line, fsi.exe, to give me commandline access to .NET for exploration, testing, and munging data. Over time, I built up quite a library of usable functions that I'd have the fsi.exe program pre-load when I kicked it off, leaving me at the prompt with all .NET namespaces and my code ready and accessible.
Once you get access to your database's data, it's easy to write queries against it and then play with the data. I could then port the F# processing bits that worked into my C# projects as necessary, but it was far easier to do it that way than to write the logic deep within complex multi-project solution files, where the various classes are spread throughout the projects' files.
I also just really enjoyed using F#.
Re: Why F#?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can write a vast majority of your C# codebase in a functional style if you prefer to. All the good stuff has been pirated from F# land by now: First-class functions, pattern matching, expression-bodied members, async functional composition, records, immutable collections, optional types, etc.
I wouldn't say "all" - C# doesn't have discriminated unions yet, which is kind of a big one, especially when you're also looking at pattern matching. A
While we wait for the official discriminated union feature, the OneOf package is a pretty good stand-in: https://github.com/mcintyre321/OneOf
Re: Why F#?
#269Our shop converted 6 years ago, from C# to exclusively F#. I also author and maintain some packages (falco, donald, validus and others). The language is tough to learn if you're coming from a C-style language. But worth the effort and experience. It's extremely concise a true delight to build programs in that are fast, robust and durable. There are a few drawbacks, depending on your perspective: - compilation is slow…
Hiring devs is perfectly fine if you don't look for F# skills - just hire generally smart people, and allow them 1-2 weeks to get comfortable with F#. Make them just solve problems from project euler or something. For those who have already done functional programming, they wont take more than 2 days to start getting productive. For those who have written a lot of code, it will take them ~2 weeks to pick up functiona…
Hi Isaac ;) Of course you can train people. But in my experience they take a lot longer to learn than you suggest.
Re: Why F#?
#270F# on front page? And popular?
ahhh, Its April Fools?
JK, I love F#. Please get over the hump and be a big language.