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I find it interesting how the software industry has done everything it can to ignore F#. This is me just lamenting how I always come back to it as the best gene

by bmitc 1y ago

I find it interesting how the software industry has done everything it can to ignore F#. This is me just lamenting how I always come back to it as the best general purpose language.

klabb3 1y ago
Huh? Usually languages that are ”ignored” turns out to be for reasons such as poor or proprietary tooling. As an ignorant bystander, how are things like Cross compilation, package manager and associated infrastructure, async io (epoll, io_uring etc), platform support, runtime requirements, FFI support, language server, etc. Are a majority of these things available with first party (or best in class) integrated tooling that are trivial to set up on all big three desktop platforms? For instance, can I compile an F# lib to an iOS framework, ideally with automatically generated bindings for C, C++ or Objective C? Can I use private repo (ie github) urls with automatic overrides while pulling deps? Generally, the answer to these questions for – let’s call it ”niche” asterisk – languages, are ”there is a GitHub project with 15 stars last updated 3 years ago that maybe solves that problem”. There are tons of amazing languages (or at the very least, underappreciated language features) that didn’t ”make it” because of these boring reasons. My entire point is that the older and grumpier I get, the less the language itself matters. Sure, I hate it when my favorite elegant feature is missing, but at the end of the day it’s easy to work around. IMO the navel gazing and bikeshedding around languages is vastly overhyped in software engineering.
- zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 1y ago
  F# compiler is cross os and allows cross compilation (dotnet build --runtime xxx), its packaged in most Linux distros as dotnet.
  - klabb3 1y ago
    Ok that helps! So where does F# shine? Any particular domains?
    - bmitc 1y ago
      All of them except for resource-constrained and real-time embedded systems.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  It's been around for a long time and sponsored by Microsoft. I don't know its exact status, but the only reason for it to lack in any of those areas is lack of will.
andrewflnr 1y ago
Probably the intersection of people who (a) want an advanced ML-style language and (b) are interested in a CLR-based language is very small. But also, doesn't it do some weird thing where it matters in what order the files are included in the compilation? I remember being interested in F# but being turned off by that, and maybe some other weird details.
- bmitc 1y ago
  That ordering is generally considered a feature to keep dependencies and modules well-organized.
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    To be quite blunt, that sounds like a rationalization. To me "well-organized" would mean that the order conclusively does not matter. Otherwise I feel like I'm eventually going to end up randomly rejiggering the ordering until the compiler stops whining.
frontfor 1y ago
I don’t want to use a language with unknown ecosystem. If I need a library to do X, I’m confident I can find it for Go, Java, Python etc. But I don’t know about F#. I also don’t want to use a language with questionable hireability.
- Blackcatmaxy 1y ago
  Haven't used F# too much myself but one of the strong points is because it shares the CLR with C# you can use any of the many packages meant for C# and it'll work because of the shared runtime.
- bmitc 1y ago
  That's all part of my point, really.
Groxx 1y ago
To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields. They've effectively dropped it a couple times in the past, and while they're currently putting effort in, the company as a whole does not seem to care about stuff like this beyond brief bursts of attention to try to win back developer mindshare, before going back to abandonment. It's what Microsoft is rather well known for.
- neonsunset 1y ago
  > To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields. This is provably wrong, unless you want to insist despite the facts because that's what your social bubble tells you to do. The most popular deployment target for .NET is Linux: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry Equating whatever else MS is up to with the way .NET evolves and is managed is no different to equating YouTube and Golang.
  - Groxx 1y ago
    People use Microsoft open source stuff, definitely. It's fairly often decent or better. But Microsoft's most consistent legacy across its entire existence has been Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Any Linux-supporting project is directly opposed to their core business, aside from Azure - if it starts becoming a threat, they'll turn it into a way to force people onto their other money-makers.
    - neonsunset 1y ago
      And so the broken record takes another turn...
      - Groxx 1y ago
        When the broken record keeps predicting the future accurately, it's not claiming to be the next Nostradamus. History just repeats pretty consistently.

by bmitc 1y ago

I find it interesting how the software industry has done everything it can to ignore F#. This is me just lamenting how I always come back to it as the best general purpose language.

klabb3 1y ago

Huh? Usually languages that are ”ignored” turns out to be for reasons such as poor or proprietary tooling. As an ignorant bystander, how are things like Cross compilation, package manager and associated infrastructure, async io (epoll, io_uring etc), platform support, runtime requirements, FFI support, language server, etc. Are a majority of these things available with first party (or best in class) integrated tooling that are trivial to set up on all big three desktop platforms? For instance, can I compile an F# lib to an iOS framework, ideally with automatically generated bindings for C, C++ or Objective C? Can I use private repo (ie github) urls with automatic overrides while pulling deps? Generally, the answer to these questions for – let’s call it ”niche” asterisk – languages, are ”there is a GitHub project with 15 stars last updated 3 years ago that maybe solves that problem”. There are tons of amazing languages (or at the very least, underappreciated language features) that didn’t ”make it” because of these boring reasons. My entire point is that the older and grumpier I get, the less the language itself matters. Sure, I hate it when my favorite elegant feature is missing, but at the end of the day it’s easy to work around. IMO the navel gazing and bikeshedding around languages is vastly overhyped in software engineering.

zxvkhkxvdvbdxz 1y ago
F# compiler is cross os and allows cross compilation (dotnet build --runtime xxx), its packaged in most Linux distros as dotnet.
- klabb3 1y ago
  Ok that helps! So where does F# shine? Any particular domains?
  - bmitc 1y ago
    All of them except for resource-constrained and real-time embedded systems.
andrewflnr 1y ago
It's been around for a long time and sponsored by Microsoft. I don't know its exact status, but the only reason for it to lack in any of those areas is lack of will.

andrewflnr 1y ago

Probably the intersection of people who (a) want an advanced ML-style language and (b) are interested in a CLR-based language is very small. But also, doesn't it do some weird thing where it matters in what order the files are included in the compilation? I remember being interested in F# but being turned off by that, and maybe some other weird details.

bmitc 1y ago
That ordering is generally considered a feature to keep dependencies and modules well-organized.
- andrewflnr 1y ago
  To be quite blunt, that sounds like a rationalization. To me "well-organized" would mean that the order conclusively does not matter. Otherwise I feel like I'm eventually going to end up randomly rejiggering the ordering until the compiler stops whining.

frontfor 1y ago

I don’t want to use a language with unknown ecosystem. If I need a library to do X, I’m confident I can find it for Go, Java, Python etc. But I don’t know about F#. I also don’t want to use a language with questionable hireability.

Blackcatmaxy 1y ago
Haven't used F# too much myself but one of the strong points is because it shares the CLR with C# you can use any of the many packages meant for C# and it'll work because of the shared runtime.
bmitc 1y ago
That's all part of my point, really.

Groxx 1y ago

To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields. They've effectively dropped it a couple times in the past, and while they're currently putting effort in, the company as a whole does not seem to care about stuff like this beyond brief bursts of attention to try to win back developer mindshare, before going back to abandonment. It's what Microsoft is rather well known for.

neonsunset 1y ago
> To within a rounding error of zero, I don't think anyone outside Windows devs truly expects Microsoft to maintain .NET on other platforms, so it's not really an option in many (most?) fields. This is provably wrong, unless you want to insist despite the facts because that's what your social bubble tells you to do. The most popular deployment target for .NET is Linux: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/telemetry Equating whatever else MS is up to with the way .NET evolves and is managed is no different to equating YouTube and Golang.
- Groxx 1y ago
  People use Microsoft open source stuff, definitely. It's fairly often decent or better. But Microsoft's most consistent legacy across its entire existence has been Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Any Linux-supporting project is directly opposed to their core business, aside from Azure - if it starts becoming a threat, they'll turn it into a way to force people onto their other money-makers.
  - neonsunset 1y ago
    And so the broken record takes another turn...
    - Groxx 1y ago
      When the broken record keeps predicting the future accurately, it's not claiming to be the next Nostradamus. History just repeats pretty consistently.