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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

I don't see why someone would evaluate F# but not OCaml, they're very similar languages. The breadth of libraries available for F# may be greater, but OCaml has some strengths that F# currently doesn't, such as native compilation. I'm teaching myself F# at the moment but I'd not rule out using OCaml in the future.

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F# is nice but it doesn't have the Ocaml module/functor system, which is a huge loss in expressiveness. It does have seamless .NET interoperability, which is a big win in some cases. YMMV. Both are good languages.

F# will likely have a native compiler soon (and you could argue it does in case you compile it for mobile using Xamarin).

The key difference for me is "is there a polished development environment where I can get from zero to debugging within minutes".

To be fair, for most people who may use something for work, "lack of available libraries" can easily be a death knell.

Sure, but it depends on what you need to do.

From my perspective Mirage is OCaml's 'killer app' (I'm sure others would disagree). Where I could see it excelling is as an open-source home server platform. I'm not sure what the current progress is but I know some of the Mirage developers were working on this particular use case, I'll see if I can find the link.

Could something like Mirage exist for F#? It could, though the Mirage team have a considerable head start.

EDIT: The project I was referring to before is Nymote: http://nymote.org/

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