4 ms·

Microsoft is throwing everything on Azure these days, I won’t be surpised if a significant proportion of these services are discontinued in the next years.

scns 8y ago
Why should they when it gets used and makes them money?
- fsloth 8y ago
  A usable industrial strength tool needs more than just the compiler and a repl. The main benefit of an industrial language is the entire toolchain including IDE with code higlighting, intellisense capabilities, debugging capabilities, etc. To provide these for F# in Visual Studio requires continuous investment. Hence, given the not-entirely-committed feel MS is emanating just now for it, if they don't feel supporting F# as a first class citizen on visual studio is worth the investment, they might orphan it to to open source developers. Who probably would hold good care of the core facilities, but would probably lack resources and interest to provide an entire industrial strength stack. I do hope this is not the scenario, and Microsoft will continue investing in the language as a first class citizen on visual studio.
  - phillipcarter 8y ago
    You can check out some of the investments we've been making for F# holistically here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/08/14/announcing-f-4-5/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/08/14/announcin... (lots of language stuff at the beginning, but there's a tools and "what we're thinking of next" section afterwards)
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Thinking of next, as usual is only interesting for the usual type provider demos, not for the working programmer using C# and VB.NET across EF, Forms, WPF, UWP, ASP.NET MVC, IoT Core, HoloLens.
      - fsloth 8y ago
        This. As an industrial programmer: F# was awesome 10 years ago, I don't really crave for new language features. I want an industrial strength tooling and ecosystem to support this awesome language, not new language features. To be painfully blunt: The language is really nice as it is. I would prefer it would expand on the bolted-on batteries included utilities rather than new contrived ways of code golfing. What is critical from industrial point of view that the fundamentals are now and "forever" rock solid. Not how many new language features it will gain. See C for reference. Nobody uses C because it gets new ways to write shorter code. People choose C for stability[0], not because it's horrible language or because it's a beautiful language. F# would be fantastical, if it would ossify like C. Then I could write it for the rest of my programming career. [0] Yes, C moves forward, but with a geological pace
      - phillipcarter 8y ago
        I think your definition of "working programmer" is a lot more specific than you're implying here. There are numerous working programmers using F# successfully today, in a broad number of scenarios. Machine Learning is our next one to tackle.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        I don't need F# for ML.NET and still get to use it on the above scenarios where F# gets a no entry to play allowance.

scns 8y ago

Why should they when it gets used and makes them money?

fsloth 8y ago
A usable industrial strength tool needs more than just the compiler and a repl. The main benefit of an industrial language is the entire toolchain including IDE with code higlighting, intellisense capabilities, debugging capabilities, etc. To provide these for F# in Visual Studio requires continuous investment. Hence, given the not-entirely-committed feel MS is emanating just now for it, if they don't feel supporting F# as a first class citizen on visual studio is worth the investment, they might orphan it to to open source developers. Who probably would hold good care of the core facilities, but would probably lack resources and interest to provide an entire industrial strength stack. I do hope this is not the scenario, and Microsoft will continue investing in the language as a first class citizen on visual studio.
- phillipcarter 8y ago
  You can check out some of the investments we've been making for F# holistically here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/08/14/announcing-f-4-5/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2018/08/14/announcin... (lots of language stuff at the beginning, but there's a tools and "what we're thinking of next" section afterwards)
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Thinking of next, as usual is only interesting for the usual type provider demos, not for the working programmer using C# and VB.NET across EF, Forms, WPF, UWP, ASP.NET MVC, IoT Core, HoloLens.
    - fsloth 8y ago
      This. As an industrial programmer: F# was awesome 10 years ago, I don't really crave for new language features. I want an industrial strength tooling and ecosystem to support this awesome language, not new language features. To be painfully blunt: The language is really nice as it is. I would prefer it would expand on the bolted-on batteries included utilities rather than new contrived ways of code golfing. What is critical from industrial point of view that the fundamentals are now and "forever" rock solid. Not how many new language features it will gain. See C for reference. Nobody uses C because it gets new ways to write shorter code. People choose C for stability[0], not because it's horrible language or because it's a beautiful language. F# would be fantastical, if it would ossify like C. Then I could write it for the rest of my programming career. [0] Yes, C moves forward, but with a geological pace
    - phillipcarter 8y ago
      I think your definition of "working programmer" is a lot more specific than you're implying here. There are numerous working programmers using F# successfully today, in a broad number of scenarios. Machine Learning is our next one to tackle.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        I don't need F# for ML.NET and still get to use it on the above scenarios where F# gets a no entry to play allowance.