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This analysis is misguided because many of those languages are DSLs, e.g. ABAP, Apex, F#. No one using them has the option of using a general purpose language (

by gaius 9y ago

This analysis is misguided because many of those languages are DSLs, e.g. ABAP, Apex, F#. No one using them has the option of using a general purpose language (and they are well-paid enough not to care). Whereas Perl 6 is in direct competition with general purpose languages. And it really is time to give up on flogging that dead horse.

varjag 9y ago
How F# is not a general purpose language?
- tluyben2 9y ago
  And how can you not use C# in that case? I understand you might not want to but...
- gaius 9y ago
  It’s not used as such, at least I’ve never seen it used like that. You would typically see it used by quants in an otherwise C# shop.
  - varjag 9y ago
    AFAIK there's no special provisions in the language for quant trading to categorize it into DSL. More along the lines of Lisp being touted as "AI language" in 1980s, while it's really a general purpose programming language.
fsloth 9y ago
F# is very much a general purpose language. The tooling and infrastructure allows one to do nearly everything that can be done in C# in F# as well, and if one needs to use C# for something that is not really an issue because the languages are fully compatible. True, there are some things that are best done in C# like WPF, but that is not a sufficient handicap to truncate F# from the population of general purpose languages.
- gaius 9y ago
  Don’t get me wrong, coming from an OCaml background I am a fan of F#. But I don’t see it going mainstream anytime soon, and I don’t think that that matters at all to anyone who uses it.
  - uryga 9y ago
    That's okay, but that's not what DSL means as far as I'm aware. Which is why you got the comments about F# being general purpose.
    - carlmr 9y ago
      I agree with uryga here. F# is not a DSL. There might be confusion, because a lot of F# people like to write DSLs in F#. But it's a full on language like any other. Except for the syntax it's not even that different from C#. Just a little better in terms of little extras it offers. The only thing vs. C# which I think it lacks is support of unsafe pointer arithmetic. Which I've never really used in C# either.
  - hollerith 9y ago
    I think you got downvoted because although your comment is plausible enough in isolation, it does not have anything to do with the thread it is attached to (even though you yourself are the originator of the thread). ADDED. You don't seem to share my preference for conversations that stay focused on one topic. Over and out.
    - gaius 9y ago
      There’s nothing to say a DSL can’t be a full language. Just that it is designed for and generally used in a specific domain. I don’t think MS ever intended or claimed F# would be the new C# - it is very clearly aimed at a particular niche. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Nor would any F# user see their language as a rival or competitor to C# or Python or Java or anything else.
      - 9y ago
lizmat 9y ago
Sorry, the horse does not agree it's dead.
hpcjoe 9y ago
"Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated." -- Mark Twain, who may or may not have been writing about Perl, Perl6, and other languages that are no longer hip.
phillipcarter 9y ago
Just chiming in to say that F# is not a DSL - it's a fully-fledged programming language. Not in use nearly as much as C#/Java/etc., but it's not a special-purpose language.

by gaius 9y ago

varjag 9y ago

How F# is not a general purpose language?

tluyben2 9y ago
And how can you not use C# in that case? I understand you might not want to but...
gaius 9y ago
It’s not used as such, at least I’ve never seen it used like that. You would typically see it used by quants in an otherwise C# shop.
- varjag 9y ago
  AFAIK there's no special provisions in the language for quant trading to categorize it into DSL. More along the lines of Lisp being touted as "AI language" in 1980s, while it's really a general purpose programming language.

fsloth 9y ago

F# is very much a general purpose language. The tooling and infrastructure allows one to do nearly everything that can be done in C# in F# as well, and if one needs to use C# for something that is not really an issue because the languages are fully compatible. True, there are some things that are best done in C# like WPF, but that is not a sufficient handicap to truncate F# from the population of general purpose languages.

gaius 9y ago
Don’t get me wrong, coming from an OCaml background I am a fan of F#. But I don’t see it going mainstream anytime soon, and I don’t think that that matters at all to anyone who uses it.
- uryga 9y ago
  That's okay, but that's not what DSL means as far as I'm aware. Which is why you got the comments about F# being general purpose.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    I agree with uryga here. F# is not a DSL. There might be confusion, because a lot of F# people like to write DSLs in F#. But it's a full on language like any other. Except for the syntax it's not even that different from C#. Just a little better in terms of little extras it offers. The only thing vs. C# which I think it lacks is support of unsafe pointer arithmetic. Which I've never really used in C# either.
- hollerith 9y ago
  I think you got downvoted because although your comment is plausible enough in isolation, it does not have anything to do with the thread it is attached to (even though you yourself are the originator of the thread). ADDED. You don't seem to share my preference for conversations that stay focused on one topic. Over and out.
  - gaius 9y ago
    There’s nothing to say a DSL can’t be a full language. Just that it is designed for and generally used in a specific domain. I don’t think MS ever intended or claimed F# would be the new C# - it is very clearly aimed at a particular niche. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Nor would any F# user see their language as a rival or competitor to C# or Python or Java or anything else.
    - 9y ago

lizmat 9y ago

Sorry, the horse does not agree it's dead.

hpcjoe 9y ago

"Rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated." -- Mark Twain, who may or may not have been writing about Perl, Perl6, and other languages that are no longer hip.

phillipcarter 9y ago

Just chiming in to say that F# is not a DSL - it's a fully-fledged programming language. Not in use nearly as much as C#/Java/etc., but it's not a special-purpose language.