6 ms·

I think F# has a good tooling story, since it's part of .NET and a first-class citizen in Visual Studio. It doesn't get as much love from Microsoft as C#, but i

I think F# has a good tooling story, since it's part of .NET and a first-class citizen in Visual Studio. It doesn't get as much love from Microsoft as C#, but it's still quite nice to use.

christophilus 4y ago
Last time I used F# on Linux, the REPL was a mess and mostly unusable. Compilation takes forever. You have to edit an fsproj rather than inferring modules from the file system structure like most modern languages. It’s a great language— maybe my favorite, but the tooling stinks if you’re not using VS. I’m not switching to Windows, so that leaves me in limbo.
- runevault 4y ago
  I'd argue Rider from Jetbrains is better than VS for F#, though that is a subscription based IDE (though you can stop paying and keep the version you originally "bought" after)
- karmakaze 4y ago
  PSA: Visual Studio for Mac[0]. I know you're on Linux but for others. [0] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac
  - sk0g 4y ago
    And just for clarity, it's not proper Visual Studio, but rather an updated MonoDevelop. Was missing quite a lot of functionality (for Unity/C#) compared to VS, so I used Rider instead.
    - karmakaze 4y ago
      I didn't know Rider supported F#, thanks for the tip.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The part about fsproj is due to module order being significant, which I don't think they can change without breaking existing code.
stiiv 4y ago
After learning a bunch of programming languages and their corresponding ecosystems (incl. Rust, Lisps, Scala), F# is still my favorite by a long shot. Its only serious shortcoming, imo, is the tooling. Visual Studio is great, but if you're not on Windows, your only practical choices are VS Code + Ionide (I was a sponsor for a while; ultimately lost hope), or JetBrains Rider, which is powerful, but heavy. Comparing my 10+ years focused on C# with ~5 years focused on F#, I was ultimately more productive in F#. But: 1. Tools for refactoring and code navigation were better for C# 2. Testing was more predictable with C#; I often just tested from the CLI with F# (so much love for Expecto, though) 3. Paket and dependency management between projects caused days of pain, especially during onboarding
- belmont_sup 4y ago
  There’s also the jetbrain ide that I’ve heard good things about compared to ionide.
  - stiiv 4y ago
    Yes, we ended up buying JetBrains Rider; I used it for a few years. I was much more productive in it than Ionide. Code analysis was excellent, though it would sometimes get weird on multi-project repos. Unit testing (incl. Expecto tests) were a little flaky. Like many JetBrains products, it was a resource hog on large projects. Probably the worst part of the Rider experience had more to do with other devs using different tools, i.e. Ionide or Visual Studio. (We were a "bring your own whatever" kind of startup.) Each IDE/toolchain had its own opinions about .fsproj files. A CI step to keep things "normal" would have been great, but there wasn't (isn't?) anything available, and we wouldn't spend the time building our own. tl;dr - Rider better than Ionide; whole team should use it
- munchler 4y ago
  Microsoft has come a long way in supporting .NET on non-Windows boxes, but I agree that it's still not as good as it could be. C# certainly has better tooling, but C# has possibly the best tooling of any programming language on the planet, so that's a high bar to meet.
- 4y ago

I think F# has a good tooling story, since it's part of .NET and a first-class citizen in Visual Studio. It doesn't get as much love from Microsoft as C#, but it's still quite nice to use.

christophilus 4y ago

Last time I used F# on Linux, the REPL was a mess and mostly unusable. Compilation takes forever. You have to edit an fsproj rather than inferring modules from the file system structure like most modern languages. It’s a great language— maybe my favorite, but the tooling stinks if you’re not using VS. I’m not switching to Windows, so that leaves me in limbo.

runevault 4y ago
I'd argue Rider from Jetbrains is better than VS for F#, though that is a subscription based IDE (though you can stop paying and keep the version you originally "bought" after)
karmakaze 4y ago
PSA: Visual Studio for Mac[0]. I know you're on Linux but for others. [0] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac
- sk0g 4y ago
  And just for clarity, it's not proper Visual Studio, but rather an updated MonoDevelop. Was missing quite a lot of functionality (for Unity/C#) compared to VS, so I used Rider instead.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    I didn't know Rider supported F#, thanks for the tip.
int_19h 4y ago
The part about fsproj is due to module order being significant, which I don't think they can change without breaking existing code.

stiiv 4y ago

After learning a bunch of programming languages and their corresponding ecosystems (incl. Rust, Lisps, Scala), F# is still my favorite by a long shot. Its only serious shortcoming, imo, is the tooling. Visual Studio is great, but if you're not on Windows, your only practical choices are VS Code + Ionide (I was a sponsor for a while; ultimately lost hope), or JetBrains Rider, which is powerful, but heavy. Comparing my 10+ years focused on C# with ~5 years focused on F#, I was ultimately more productive in F#. But: 1. Tools for refactoring and code navigation were better for C# 2. Testing was more predictable with C#; I often just tested from the CLI with F# (so much love for Expecto, though) 3. Paket and dependency management between projects caused days of pain, especially during onboarding

belmont_sup 4y ago
There’s also the jetbrain ide that I’ve heard good things about compared to ionide.
- stiiv 4y ago
  Yes, we ended up buying JetBrains Rider; I used it for a few years. I was much more productive in it than Ionide. Code analysis was excellent, though it would sometimes get weird on multi-project repos. Unit testing (incl. Expecto tests) were a little flaky. Like many JetBrains products, it was a resource hog on large projects. Probably the worst part of the Rider experience had more to do with other devs using different tools, i.e. Ionide or Visual Studio. (We were a "bring your own whatever" kind of startup.) Each IDE/toolchain had its own opinions about .fsproj files. A CI step to keep things "normal" would have been great, but there wasn't (isn't?) anything available, and we wouldn't spend the time building our own. tl;dr - Rider better than Ionide; whole team should use it
munchler 4y ago
Microsoft has come a long way in supporting .NET on non-Windows boxes, but I agree that it's still not as good as it could be. C# certainly has better tooling, but C# has possibly the best tooling of any programming language on the planet, so that's a high bar to meet.
4y ago