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How does ReasonML/Bucklescript stack up against F#/Fable. Is the only difference that F# has the .NET environment?

• yawaramin 9y ago
  Good question. I would say the differences are: - BuckleScript targets ES5 (+ES6 modules) directly, while Fable targets ES2015 (and beyond) and relies on Babel to transpile its result to ES5 - BuckleScript/ReasonML needs only NodeJS/npm to work for JavaScript compiles (but you can get the opam compiler/package manager if you want to do native development) - BuckleScript/ReasonML has a more powerful traditional OCaml type system with higher-level abstraction features like functors and generalised algebraic data types, while Fable relies more on OOP for abstraction - At the moment at least, BuckleScript's JS output is far more minimal than Fable's–try defining a simple record type like `type person = {id: int}` in both their online playgrounds to see the difference–it's pretty striking - But Fable does have an open GitHub issue talking about minimising their output to be more BuckleScript-like, so it might catch up - BuckleScript's JavaScript interop is just as powerful if not more, but does require a shift in thinking because its premise is to convert JavaScript idioms into OCaml idioms
  • sp33der89 9y ago
    Thanks for this, great explanation(and as a F# looks fair). I'll try out ReasonML one of these weekends, thank you.