3 ms·

> compared to mainstream languages like C# Out of curiosity does this also hold true for F#?

by devjab 2y ago

louthy 2y ago
F#’s tooling is worse than C# for sure, but it’s a big step-up from Haskell and has access to the .NET framework. I listed C# because that’s the mainstream language I know the best, and arguably has best-in-class tooling. Of course you have to be prepared to lose some of the creature comforts when using a more left-field language. But, you still need to be productive. The whole ecosystem has to be a net gain in productivity, or stability, or security, or maintainability — pick your poison depending on what matters to your situation. I had hoped Haskell would pay dividends due to its purity, expressive type-system, battle tested-ness, etc. I expected us to be slower, just not as slow as it turned out. Ultimately the trade off didn’t work for us.
- devjab 2y ago
  Thank you for the answer. It’s exactly because of C#’s excellent tooling I was wondering if they had done similar for F#. > The whole ecosystem has to be a net gain in productivity, or stability, or security, or maintainability — pick your poison depending on what matters to your situation. I very much agree with you on this. I’ve worked in places where we used Typescript on the back-end because it was easier for a small team to work together (and go on vacations) while working in the same language even though there was a trade off performance wise. Ultimately I think it’s always about finding the best way to be productive.
  - louthy 2y ago
    F#'s biggest issue is C#. It benefits from Visual Studio and Jetbrains Rider as best-in-class tools, but having to rely on the .NET Framework means relying on an OO first library ecosystem in your functional code. Which can be clumsy and looks a little messy with the mix of camelCase and PascalCase functions. Also, it has support for features that probably shouldn't be in the language, but are because of C# (interfaces and type-inheritance for example). The compiler is slower than C# but arguably fast enough. And they have made a weird choice about ordering of source-files dictating ordering of compilation, so you have to manually sort source-files in the IDE. Which is both a pain and makes it sometimes hard to visually find your source-file because they're not in alphabetical order. I like F# but it doesn't have enough unique features over C# to make it worthwhile imho. Disclaimer: The last time I wrote any F# was about 5 years ago. Things may be different now!

> compared to mainstream languages like C# Out of curiosity does this also hold true for F#?

by devjab 2y ago

> compared to mainstream languages like C# Out of curiosity does this also hold true for F#?

F#’s tooling is worse than C# for sure, but it’s a big step-up from Haskell and has access to the .NET framework. I listed C# because that’s the mainstream language I know the best, and arguably has best-in-class tooling. Of course you have to be prepared to lose some of the creature comforts when using a more left-field language. But, you still need to be productive. The whole ecosystem has to be a net gain in productivity, or stability, or security, or maintainability — pick your poison depending on what matters to your situation. I had hoped Haskell would pay dividends due to its purity, expressive type-system, battle tested-ness, etc. I expected us to be slower, just not as slow as it turned out. Ultimately the trade off didn’t work for us.

devjab 2y ago
Thank you for the answer. It’s exactly because of C#’s excellent tooling I was wondering if they had done similar for F#. > The whole ecosystem has to be a net gain in productivity, or stability, or security, or maintainability — pick your poison depending on what matters to your situation. I very much agree with you on this. I’ve worked in places where we used Typescript on the back-end because it was easier for a small team to work together (and go on vacations) while working in the same language even though there was a trade off performance wise. Ultimately I think it’s always about finding the best way to be productive.
- louthy 2y ago
  F#'s biggest issue is C#. It benefits from Visual Studio and Jetbrains Rider as best-in-class tools, but having to rely on the .NET Framework means relying on an OO first library ecosystem in your functional code. Which can be clumsy and looks a little messy with the mix of camelCase and PascalCase functions. Also, it has support for features that probably shouldn't be in the language, but are because of C# (interfaces and type-inheritance for example). The compiler is slower than C# but arguably fast enough. And they have made a weird choice about ordering of source-files dictating ordering of compilation, so you have to manually sort source-files in the IDE. Which is both a pain and makes it sometimes hard to visually find your source-file because they're not in alphabetical order. I like F# but it doesn't have enough unique features over C# to make it worthwhile imho. Disclaimer: The last time I wrote any F# was about 5 years ago. Things may be different now!