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Why F#?

(batsov.com)
438 points bozhidar | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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lihaoyi ◴[] 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. ◴[] No.43553300[source]