Thanks Piers. I think that's an excellent summary of the F# dilemma - it is better but falls due to its far lower adoption. For those old enough to understand, it's VHS vs BetaMax.
On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 at 12:07, Piers Williams via ozdotnet < ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote: > I'm a bit torn on this subject. > > I spent the last 3 years of the 'hands on' part of my dev career swapped > over to F# from many, many years of writing predominantly C#, and it was a > fantastic experience. Don Syne's main pitch these days is to think of F# as > a productivity language first, and a FP language second, and I would > support that view. Much of what F# pioneered in the .net space has indeed > come over to C# in recent versions, but as a result C# syntax has grown > significantly, and I see engineers having to talk each other out of 'bad > practices' to use new idioms. You don't get that in F# - the 'right way' is > just the default to start with, and you have to go out of your way to do > the reverse (mutable code, side-affecting structures etc...). Rather than > FP, just think 'nicer C#'. > > That said, as a manager now, I'd have to be completely honest that it does > present some real issues, principally around recruitment and/or ramp-up. I > personally thought the cross-skilling was easy (~2-3 weeks), but even > allowing for that, it's still an impost, and there is an entirely > legitimate view that it's just one more thing engineers have to think > about. F# hasn't been ported to Roslyn (Roslyn can't yet cope with tail > calls I believe), which then excludes some tooling (like static analysis). > And Microsoft themselves were gently dissuasive when the subject of using > it for a particular project was brought up by the team. > > So ultimately I think the question comes down to productivity and > cognitive load. F# does a fantastic job (I think) of reducing those, but at > the cost of biting off some up-front cross-skilling. The latter cost is > very real and tangible, and the former is quite a lot harder to pin down > and measure. > > Ultimately in my case the engineering team came to the conclusion they had > enough on their plate to worry about already, and I can't help but > sympathise with that. That said, any code I write at home, or just to prove > a point, I write in F#. I'm never going back. > > Piers > > On Thu, 30 Jun 2022 at 10:31, Tom Gao via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> > wrote: > >> I used F# for my doctorate as a modelling language to build out a >> prototype for a security integration platform I developed. >> >> The problem is that there are very few people who use F# afaik. Getting >> any commercial code developed will create a problem for ongoing support. >> Just my view. >> >> btw. this is a long shot. I'm looking for a senior digital PM in sydney >> does anyone know of anyone good who might be interested? (I'm not a >> recruiter but just desperate to get a project going) >> >> On Fri, Jun 24, 2022 at 3:42 PM David Burstin via ozdotnet < >> ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com> wrote: >> >>> Hi folks, >>> >>> It's been about a year since I asked, so here it is again. Does anyone >>> know of any F# work being done in Melbourne, or anywhere in Australia? >>> >>> I've managed to do some small F# helper apps for my employer, but 98% of >>> what I do is C#. I'd really love to find somewhere that uses F#. >>> >>> On the plus side - F# has helped improve my C# approach dramatically, >>> and C# is constantly introducing more functional ideas (although >>> discriminated unions and active patterns would be lovely). >>> >>> So, anyone know anything? >>> >>> Cheers >>> David >>> -- >>> ozdotnet mailing list >>> To manage your subscription, access archives: >>> https://codify.mailman3.com/ >> >> -- >> ozdotnet mailing list >> To manage your subscription, access archives: >> https://codify.mailman3.com/ > > > > -- > piers > -- > ozdotnet mailing list > To manage your subscription, access archives: https://codify.mailman3.com/
