4 ms·

Strange post, or maybe I'm missing the point, or is it supposed to be sarcastic? Also what's with the generalisations ('enterprise shops don't like change & non

by stinos 13y ago

Strange post, or maybe I'm missing the point, or is it supposed to be sarcastic? Also what's with the generalisations ('enterprise shops don't like change & non-enterprise do', come on)? half assed versions things of F# already had (tuples, async and tasks I’m looking at you) yes F# has those, but afaik so do a myriad of other languages. Even before F# saw the daylight. I'm also not sure what is half assed about them, the implementation seems quite complete? a language that is afraid to change anything coming from a post talking about new features and 'changing into F#' that's quite a contradiction, no?

rjzzleep 13y ago
i think you're missing the point a little bit. > yes F# has those, but afaik so do a myriad of other languages. Even before F# saw the daylight. I'm also not sure what is half assed about them, the implementation seems quite complete? it's true, but c# advocates in microsoft have been quite parasitic in their behavior of pushing the language(inside of microsoft). they have also been averse to competition. i remember it's not too long ago, that we weren't really sure if microsoft was about to pull the plug on f# or not. there haven't been too many clr languages, and ironpython was suffocated fairly quickly. yes you can use clojure on the clr, but who's using that, and is a meaningful customer to microsoft? f# has been really smart in it's behavior in my opinion, by fairly quickly targeting the microsoft enterprise stack, stuff like share point, dynamics, and other crap like that. it's also a hybrid language that is close enough to c# that you can claim c# developers can just pick it up. you could argue that good developers can pick up any language, but we're not talking about good developers here. we're talking about something that is more akin to factory work. this is just my opinion, but i think the biggest customers of microsoft are government, government contractors, and people that sell to government contractors. it's not about whether f# is really revolutionary or not. f# is very close to ocaml. f# is revolutionary to the microsoft enterprise stack. asp.net mvc wasn't revolutionary either, but it was revolutionary to the .net culture. take a look at some posts describing alt .net http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc337902.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc337902.aspx
- kevingadd 13y ago
  I've been using C# for close to a decade at this point (wow, wtf) and I'm fairly familiar with functional programming techniques - I use a lot of closures, immutability, and map/reduce patterns in my code - but F# is still really awkward for me to write and use compared to C#. Even if they can express the same things, and F# is more powerful, it's a far more inconvenient language to use for someone that hasn't been living and breathing ML for years. Furthermore, in general F# seems to generate far less efficient code than C# does, and for the kind of development I do (games/multimedia) I'm not really willing to sacrifice even more performance just because some FP fanatic thinks C# should go away. Personally, I think the C# compiler and the .NET JIT should have a lot more tuning applied, and get things like SIMD introduced, but MS doesn't seem to care about that. Writing code in C# also makes it accessible to a much wider set of developers. The overlap and shared heritage with languages like Java is definitely a plus, even if I don't like some of the shitty design baggage that comes with it. It's already a struggle to get the community engaged with my project, JSIL - if it was written in an obscure language like F#, it'd be nearly impossible.
  - rjzzleep 13y ago
    > I'm fairly familiar with functional programming techniques - I use a lot of closures, immutability, and map/reduce patterns in my code i think that's the minority of c# developers though. > I'm not really willing to sacrifice even more performance just because some FP fanatic thinks C# should go away why should that even be question though? now think of a web application. suddenly f# reduces the amount of cruft you have to a great extent. why do people always think it's an either or? why can i not like html5, and still want it to stay outside of my desktop application? > it's a far more inconvenient language to use for someone that hasn't been living and breathing ML for years. yes, you may be right. but i think most programming is really copy and paste programming. when they know where they can find what they need to write their program it doesn't really matter what language it is written in. > even if I don't like some of the shitty design baggage that comes with it :D > It's already a struggle to get the community engaged with my project, JSIL - if it was written in an obscure language like F#, it'd be nearly impossible interesting project. well, i would argue that it's because your project is not really playing to the masses. vsvim for example has more forks and stars than your project, 33% of it (the core) is written in f#. but it has also been around for much longer, and addresses a need people have.

by stinos 13y ago

rjzzleep 13y ago

i think you're missing the point a little bit. > yes F# has those, but afaik so do a myriad of other languages. Even before F# saw the daylight. I'm also not sure what is half assed about them, the implementation seems quite complete? it's true, but c# advocates in microsoft have been quite parasitic in their behavior of pushing the language(inside of microsoft). they have also been averse to competition. i remember it's not too long ago, that we weren't really sure if microsoft was about to pull the plug on f# or not. there haven't been too many clr languages, and ironpython was suffocated fairly quickly. yes you can use clojure on the clr, but who's using that, and is a meaningful customer to microsoft? f# has been really smart in it's behavior in my opinion, by fairly quickly targeting the microsoft enterprise stack, stuff like share point, dynamics, and other crap like that. it's also a hybrid language that is close enough to c# that you can claim c# developers can just pick it up. you could argue that good developers can pick up any language, but we're not talking about good developers here. we're talking about something that is more akin to factory work. this is just my opinion, but i think the biggest customers of microsoft are government, government contractors, and people that sell to government contractors. it's not about whether f# is really revolutionary or not. f# is very close to ocaml. f# is revolutionary to the microsoft enterprise stack. asp.net mvc wasn't revolutionary either, but it was revolutionary to the .net culture. take a look at some posts describing alt .net http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc337902.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc337902.aspx

kevingadd 13y ago
I've been using C# for close to a decade at this point (wow, wtf) and I'm fairly familiar with functional programming techniques - I use a lot of closures, immutability, and map/reduce patterns in my code - but F# is still really awkward for me to write and use compared to C#. Even if they can express the same things, and F# is more powerful, it's a far more inconvenient language to use for someone that hasn't been living and breathing ML for years. Furthermore, in general F# seems to generate far less efficient code than C# does, and for the kind of development I do (games/multimedia) I'm not really willing to sacrifice even more performance just because some FP fanatic thinks C# should go away. Personally, I think the C# compiler and the .NET JIT should have a lot more tuning applied, and get things like SIMD introduced, but MS doesn't seem to care about that. Writing code in C# also makes it accessible to a much wider set of developers. The overlap and shared heritage with languages like Java is definitely a plus, even if I don't like some of the shitty design baggage that comes with it. It's already a struggle to get the community engaged with my project, JSIL - if it was written in an obscure language like F#, it'd be nearly impossible.
- rjzzleep 13y ago
  > I'm fairly familiar with functional programming techniques - I use a lot of closures, immutability, and map/reduce patterns in my code i think that's the minority of c# developers though. > I'm not really willing to sacrifice even more performance just because some FP fanatic thinks C# should go away why should that even be question though? now think of a web application. suddenly f# reduces the amount of cruft you have to a great extent. why do people always think it's an either or? why can i not like html5, and still want it to stay outside of my desktop application? > it's a far more inconvenient language to use for someone that hasn't been living and breathing ML for years. yes, you may be right. but i think most programming is really copy and paste programming. when they know where they can find what they need to write their program it doesn't really matter what language it is written in. > even if I don't like some of the shitty design baggage that comes with it :D > It's already a struggle to get the community engaged with my project, JSIL - if it was written in an obscure language like F#, it'd be nearly impossible interesting project. well, i would argue that it's because your project is not really playing to the masses. vsvim for example has more forks and stars than your project, 33% of it (the core) is written in f#. but it has also been around for much longer, and addresses a need people have.