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I think the article is spammy and has a clickbait title. Unfortunately reading and addressing the actual article on Hacker News is old-fashioned. StackOverflow

I think the article is spammy and has a clickbait title. Unfortunately reading and addressing the actual article on Hacker News is old-fashioned. StackOverflow surveys, while interesting, are probably meaningless because they suffer from selection bias. Even so, I would guess that F# developers are very well paid, like other developers of FP languages, but it's probably not because they work with F#. The causality is likely reversed - good developers that tend to be well paid are also the kind of people naturally interested in expanding their skill set, hence interested in FP languages. Nothing screams spam more than usage of a hot keyword like "functional programming" while leaving hints that you don't understand what you're talking about. I would expect an article that reads like a marketing brochure to at least make a short attempt at explaining what functional programming is. If you copy/paste testimonials from fsharp.org/testimonials, you could also copy/paste from Wikipedia. But then, their own course named "Functional Programming" doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual functional programming: https://fsharp.tv/courses/functional-programming/ https://fsharp.tv/courses/functional-programming/

insulanian 10y ago
> their own course named "Functional Programming" doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual functional programming Why do you think so?
smoothdeveloper 10y ago
I think the title can be alleged mostly to the misconception which is prevalent at Microsoft since F# was introduced as a commercial product (before it used to be a Microsoft Research product). Maybe you are unaware of that? F# is a pretty good general purpose programming language and that is what the title and article tries to promote (albeit it doesn't give enough and diversified examples). F# is also a reasonably easy programming language which puts emphasis first on "functional programming" (which you frame as hot keyword, I doubt the language was made to fill a hot keyword). I don't know about the for pay contents of fsharp.tv, but I gather they might be introductory and try to bring understanding of "functional programming" aspects to an audience which isn't versed in it, it is sure good for them if "functional programming" is a hot keyword and people are looking for training material to pickup that language, but I wouldn't dismiss that as being spammy. Chill out dude :)
jackmott 10y ago
F# was also voted most LOVED language in the F# survey.
- smoothdeveloper 10y ago
  In the Stack Overflow survey :)
ZenoArrow 10y ago
Functional programming is a broad term that at its core describes languages that allow you to pass functions around as values to other functions. In other words, when using a function the parameters of that function can be defined as other functions instead of needing to be precalculated variables or constants. That's basically all that links functional programming languages, all other language design decisions can vary.
- louthy 10y ago
  Most OO languages can do this now, and they wouldn't be classed as functional languages. I know this is always a sticky subject, but for me I prefer to think of functional languages as 'expression oriented' rather than 'statement oriented'.
  - sremani 10y ago
    F# is a functional first language, yes, C# with Func<> can do many things, but functional code in F# is just smooth and easy, unlike C#, where you have to put up with lot of noise.
    - louthy 10y ago
      I haven't mentioned or was making any points about F# or C#; I was commenting on what appears to be your definition of a functional language, that is "Functional programming is a broad term that at its core describes languages that allow you to pass functions around as values to other functions". Even if that meant something in the past, it really isn't a useful definition any more, because pretty much all languages do this. That's why I offered my alternative description. Even if it too has flaws, I think it's a more meaningful description.
      - markfsharp 10y ago
        Pure functions, i.e. that are 1) idempotent 2) have all their arguments passed in 3) cause no side effects as a by product of evaluating the function are fundamental to functional programming.

insulanian 10y ago

> their own course named "Functional Programming" doesn't seem to have anything to do with actual functional programming Why do you think so?

smoothdeveloper 10y ago

I think the title can be alleged mostly to the misconception which is prevalent at Microsoft since F# was introduced as a commercial product (before it used to be a Microsoft Research product). Maybe you are unaware of that? F# is a pretty good general purpose programming language and that is what the title and article tries to promote (albeit it doesn't give enough and diversified examples). F# is also a reasonably easy programming language which puts emphasis first on "functional programming" (which you frame as hot keyword, I doubt the language was made to fill a hot keyword). I don't know about the for pay contents of fsharp.tv, but I gather they might be introductory and try to bring understanding of "functional programming" aspects to an audience which isn't versed in it, it is sure good for them if "functional programming" is a hot keyword and people are looking for training material to pickup that language, but I wouldn't dismiss that as being spammy. Chill out dude :)

jackmott 10y ago

F# was also voted most LOVED language in the F# survey.

smoothdeveloper 10y ago
In the Stack Overflow survey :)

ZenoArrow 10y ago

Functional programming is a broad term that at its core describes languages that allow you to pass functions around as values to other functions. In other words, when using a function the parameters of that function can be defined as other functions instead of needing to be precalculated variables or constants. That's basically all that links functional programming languages, all other language design decisions can vary.

louthy 10y ago
Most OO languages can do this now, and they wouldn't be classed as functional languages. I know this is always a sticky subject, but for me I prefer to think of functional languages as 'expression oriented' rather than 'statement oriented'.
- sremani 10y ago
  F# is a functional first language, yes, C# with Func<> can do many things, but functional code in F# is just smooth and easy, unlike C#, where you have to put up with lot of noise.
  - louthy 10y ago
    I haven't mentioned or was making any points about F# or C#; I was commenting on what appears to be your definition of a functional language, that is "Functional programming is a broad term that at its core describes languages that allow you to pass functions around as values to other functions". Even if that meant something in the past, it really isn't a useful definition any more, because pretty much all languages do this. That's why I offered my alternative description. Even if it too has flaws, I think it's a more meaningful description.
    - markfsharp 10y ago
      Pure functions, i.e. that are 1) idempotent 2) have all their arguments passed in 3) cause no side effects as a by product of evaluating the function are fundamental to functional programming.