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I think it's not necessarily about people using F# but rather about creating cool things to help attract intelligent people to Microsoft and to give technical-m

by halo 18y ago

I think it's not necessarily about people using F# but rather about creating cool things to help attract intelligent people to Microsoft and to give technical-minded people a better impression of them. Secondarily it also gives puts them in a prime position within the functional programming niche in case it does catch on and is likely to become the first choice in production environments. It will attract a very different set of people to the .NET stack. Microsoft Research have employed Simon Peyton Jones, one of the main designer of Haskell, for the best part of a decade to work on GHC so functional programming is not really new to them.

shimi 18y ago
I fear I wasn't clear. The main problem of the .NET is its distribution. I had to write million lines of C++ win32 code, because no one wants to distribute a 22MB .NET installer. As goes to ASP.NET that only works with IIS. F# could be a great thing, but I wish MS would have solved this prime issue before adding all kind of funky languages to the .NET Framework
- MrRage 18y ago
  I don't think this is an "issue" to Microsoft. I doubt that they want to officially support .NET on more than their own platforms. .NET is becoming more and more tied to Windows anyway, e.g. WPF.
- wayne 18y ago
  Eh, the problem will get fixed eventually when in 5-10 years everyone upgrades to Vista and later OSes which come with .NET. It's similar to the IE6 problem. People aren't willing to upgrade their old machines and Microsoft can't force a Windows Update without incurring the wrath of antitrust prosecutors. Segmenting the download into smaller chunks isn't a panacea either. As a case point, take a look at the Tablet SDK. To redistribute that to non-Tablet, developers have to choose between 6 distinct components and check whether each one is on the system (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819420.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819420.aspx)... no user's gonna know whether they have the "Ink Divider object" installed. Having big versioned checkpoints is definitely the clearest from a user and development perspective (e.g. "make sure you have .NET 3.5"). So in the meantime, all Microsoft can do is keep working to make .NET better.
- Elepsis 18y ago
  How is this different from the JVM, though, aside in that Java pretty much never caught on for desktop apps?
  - MoeDrippins 18y ago
    It's not, but java never caught on for desktop apps because Swing is a steaming pile.

by halo 18y ago

shimi 18y ago

I fear I wasn't clear. The main problem of the .NET is its distribution. I had to write million lines of C++ win32 code, because no one wants to distribute a 22MB .NET installer. As goes to ASP.NET that only works with IIS. F# could be a great thing, but I wish MS would have solved this prime issue before adding all kind of funky languages to the .NET Framework

MrRage 18y ago
I don't think this is an "issue" to Microsoft. I doubt that they want to officially support .NET on more than their own platforms. .NET is becoming more and more tied to Windows anyway, e.g. WPF.
wayne 18y ago
Eh, the problem will get fixed eventually when in 5-10 years everyone upgrades to Vista and later OSes which come with .NET. It's similar to the IE6 problem. People aren't willing to upgrade their old machines and Microsoft can't force a Windows Update without incurring the wrath of antitrust prosecutors. Segmenting the download into smaller chunks isn't a panacea either. As a case point, take a look at the Tablet SDK. To redistribute that to non-Tablet, developers have to choose between 6 distinct components and check whether each one is on the system (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819420.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819420.aspx)... no user's gonna know whether they have the "Ink Divider object" installed. Having big versioned checkpoints is definitely the clearest from a user and development perspective (e.g. "make sure you have .NET 3.5"). So in the meantime, all Microsoft can do is keep working to make .NET better.
Elepsis 18y ago
How is this different from the JVM, though, aside in that Java pretty much never caught on for desktop apps?
- MoeDrippins 18y ago
  It's not, but java never caught on for desktop apps because Swing is a steaming pile.