HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ jamez1

F# is awesome, I wish I had jumped on it sooner. I find myself spending a lot less time writing code and a lot more time thinking.

The .Net ecosystem is great. I hope more shops adopt F# in the future.

⬐ gagege

> I find myself spending a lot less time writing code and a lot more time thinking.

That's exactly what I have found to be true as well. I spend practically all of my coding time implementing things rather than trying things. That has spilled over into my use of C#, JS and Python too.

I'm hoping I can slowly introduce F# at work, until one day, a few years later we look at all our code and realize it's mostly F#.

⬐ lportion

I totally agree. However, there seems to be very few jobs for F# and I'd love to write use it on a daily basis.

I've taken the advice of F# For Fun and Profit (http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/low-risk-ways-to-use...) and started writing various tools in F#.

⬐ dagw

there seems to be very few jobs for F#

More and more places that use C# are opening up to using F# where it makes sense. So any time you see C# in a job description that sounds interesting it's worth asking about F#.

⬐ seanmcdirmid

I code to think. The only thing working against F# a bit is that C# isn't that bad of a language.

⬐ pjmlp

And being sold as library only language on Visual Studio tooling, but I when I look around the enterprise environments I work on, I do get the point why Microsoft tries to push it that way.

⬐ tesmar2

As someone who is wanting to learn a functional language, it seems to me that F# is a good place to start. I've heard people disparage the lack of HKTs, but some of the other features like Type Providers seem too compelling to pass up.

⬐ None

None

⬐ lmm

It's a perfectly good language and a sensible choice if you need the .net interop. But if you just want to learn a functional language, Haskell or Scala provide much the same features and also have HKT support.

⬐ marpstar

I've just really started using F#, but the first time I used the Type Providers in FSharp.Data, I was blown away. That and F# interactive make prototyping a REST API client something I can do in minutes.

⬐ icedog

If anybody is interested in F#, look for a nearby meetup group to join. The SF F# group is pretty active and Mathias Brandewinder's hacker dojos are absolutely awesome!

[0] http://www.meetup.com/sfsharp/

⬐ yodsanklai

Could someone briefly sum up the differences between F# and OCaml? Are there any reasons to switch from OCaml to F# in a Unix environment?

⬐ DanRosenwasser

At the very least, true multithreading and compatibility with .NET libraries. It's a great language with its own merits, and worth learning.

⬐ enricosada

some differences:

- consume and produce .net libraries (everything c# can do except NullReferenceException)

- type providers, explore and use an api, strogly typed but easier than dynamic (example http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2013/01/30/twelve-type... or http://fsharp.github.io/FSharp.Data/library/Freebase.html or http://fsharp.github.io/FSharp.Data/library/CsvProvider.html)

- computation expression, easier to create like attempt/maybe and some builtin like async/query

- concurrency and async (battle tested multicore/threading/async using .net runtime)

- light syntax as default, like python (whitespace). ocaml like syntax can be used but is not idiomatic

- .net runtime and mono, really good vm

- overloading operators (operators are function), so + instead of multiple function like + and +.

try it

- user groups list http://c4fsharp.net/groups.html

- browser http://www.tryfsharp.org/

- more info fsharp.org

- open source http://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp (vs stuff) or http://github.com/fsharp/fsharp (cross plat)

⬐ ignoramous

OCaml can compile to native. That makes it faster than F# running in a VM. OCaml can compile to bytecode as well. Also, if you ever need interfacing with C/CPP, OCaml is better suited (faster) to the task than, say, Ruby or JVM based languages.

Apart from that, multithreading in OCaml is a bit like on its on Python, IIRC, with GIL taking the sting out of it. But I am sure the researchers in France and elsewhere would bring true multithreading / multicore support to OCaml sooner rather than later.

More on what OCaml gets right: https://realworldocaml.org/ (which seems to be down right now).

⬐ mercurial

There is a multicore runtime in the works, with an ETA of "when it's done". That said, you have a couple of full-featured monadic concurrency libraries (Lwt and Async).

It also has functors (they let you parametrize a module over other modules), which F# doesn't, and you can do AST rewriting at compile-time via PPX (don't know if F# has anything like that). On the other hand, F# has access to the .NET ecosystem (which is admittedly larger than the OCaml one, though it suffers from enterprisitis), and has some nice goodies like type providers.

⬐ VesaKarvonen

FYI, my Hopac library (https://github.com/Hopac/Hopac) is also a full-featured monadic concurrency library, inspired by Concurrent ML, for F# that is optimized for parallel programming.

⬐ pjmlp

> OCaml can compile to native.

F# as well, via mono -aot, NGEN and the upcoming .NET Native toolchain.

> But I am sure the researchers in France and elsewhere would bring true multithreading / multicore support to OCaml sooner rather than later.

This is being worked on. "OCaml 2014: Multicore OCaml"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzmQTC_X5R4

https://ocaml.org/meetings/ocaml/2014/ocaml2014_1.pdf

⬐ rottyguy

How is F# for the web (both front and back end)? tx

⬐ soyrochus

Excellent. F# is fully supported by ASP.MVC / WebApi and there are a number of F# specific frameworks/components available.

There are two "Javascript transpilers" available, WebSharper and FunScript, both capable of compiling a large subset of F# to JavaScript. WebSharper offers a very attractive "server mode" as well. And the new - soon to be released - version 3.0 of WebSharper makes that into a very large subset and supports features like source maps as well.

http://fsharp.org/guides/web/

⬐ synaesthesisx

Isn't F# a ripoff of OCAML?

⬐ Ironballs

Just as much as OCaml is a "ripoff" of Standard ML.

So, not really.

⬐ enricosada

f# and OCAML are both from ML family, so yes syntax is similar (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:ML_programming_langua... )

Both can do oop Syntax differ a bit. F# is whitespace significant like python by default, or ml like with and option

Saying ripoff in languages's design is stupid

⬐ klibertp

What do you mean by "ripoff"? F# is not OCaml, but it indeed is closely related. They share some syntax and basic language features like tail call optimization, records and variants or pattern matching. On the other hand F# object system is completely different from OCaml's as it needs to work with other .NET languages. F# introduces active patterns and operator overloading which is absent from OCaml. OCaml features a very sophisticated module system, which in turn is absent from F#.

In short, F# and OCaml are similar but distinct languages. Both are interesting and worth looking into, each in its own right.

⬐ everyone

Looks like there is a cat on that blue chair.

⬐ enricosada

F# is amazing.

Computation expression and type provider are awesome features, and the language itself is really fun and easy to write/refactor/understand (this mean code work as expected at first run usually) and help you write correct code

an good "why f#' http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/why-use-fsharp/

More info

- user groups list http://c4fsharp.net/groups.html

- browser http://www.tryfsharp.org/

- more info fsharp.org

- open source http://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp (vs stuff) or http://github.com/fsharp/fsharp (cross plat)