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Why F#?

(batsov.com)
447 points bozhidar | 1 comments | 01 Apr 25 12:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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lihaoyi ◴[01 Apr 25 12:51 UTC] No.43546186[source]▶
I learned F# in 2013 and had a lot of fun with it, some of that code remains on Github (e.g. a 2D platformer game for windows https://github.com/lihaoyi/FSharpMetro/tree/master/Applicati...).

My experience was that it was a surprisingly nice language with a surprisingly warty user experience: papercuts ranging from naming conventions and function call styles (`|> List.map` vs `.Select`), basic syntax (`foo.[0]` to lookup arrays), type system features (F# doesn't have covariance/contravariance even though C# does), IDE support (back then was only Visual Studio, whose support for F# was inferior to C#).

Ended up settling on Scala after that, as a language with its own Warts, but one that somehow managed to feel a more cohesive than F# did despite having largely the same featureset and positioning.

F# was my first functional language and one that changed how I look at programming, but at the same time I'm happy to not actually have to use it for serious programming!

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1. JohnyTex ◴[01 Apr 25 15:51 UTC] No.43548252[source]▶
FWIW I think writing F# is a really cohesive experience in day-to-day work. While there are usually at least two ways to do things, due to .NET interoperability requirements, it’s usually pretty clear which way is the “right” way to do something.

F# feels kind of similar to Python in this regard, where there might be more than one way to do it, but there is community and ecosystem consensus on what is the right way.

I think a lot of credit should go to Don Syme for this; he seems to have a very clear vision of what F# should and should not be, and the combination of features ends up being very tasteful and well composed.