As well as the readability advantages, a major reason for the pipeline operator in F# (the first place I encountered it) is to help with type inference. Because

As well as the readability advantages, a major reason for the pipeline operator in F# (the first place I encountered it) is to help with type inference. Because type inference happens left to right in F# the compiler usually knows the type you're dealing with already with code written using the pipeline operator but you may have to manually specify the type without it. It also makes for a better intellisense experience.