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Comment by sdegutis | Hacker News Reader

I've been wanting to make some .NET apps for our family's use (like a timer etc.) but don't know C# so I figured maybe I should just start off learning F# since I have a FP background. So is F# pretty much Rust but with GC? Or is it more like TypeScript -- in the sense that it's based on OCaml which maps nicely to JS (i.e. ReasonML) -- but also with sum types?

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Rust isn't very FP, even if working with a borrow checker limits sharing, thus approaching the problem from a different angle, but with similar results as referential transparency.

And TypeScript doesn't have much in common with OCaml.

F# is similar with OCaml, yes, but it's missing some OCaml features such as functors and row polymorphism. It also uses .NET's OOP and introduces a couple of nice features of its own like type providers.

It's a cool language, especially if you want to target .NET

If you want to use F# to build GUIs, you should definitely check out Fabolous [1]. It uses Xamarin.Forms to render the widgets, and you get to write the application logic using the Elm architecture.

[1] https://github.com/fsprojects/Fabulous

F# is 85% OCaml. IDE is probably better though. Also you get all the .NET libraries.

. . . kind of.

F# is OCaml minus the macro system, minus the higher-order module system, minus the OCaml object system, plus the .NET object system, plus a bunch of fun builtin features that nevertheless mostly just supply stuff that OCaml can do with macros, plus non-painful multithreading, plus a fairly different syntax.

They are both members of the ML family, but that tells you about as much about what they have in common as pointing out that C# and Objective-C are both members of the Algol family.

Actually, for UI stuff you might want to just do C#. UI designers work better there.

If all you are wanting to do is make desktop gui stuff for your family C# + Winforms is super easy to pick up.

Or perhaps skip it altogether.

Most of my “family” apps is just quick hacks in JavaScript. Simple to throw together, runs on everything with a browser, like the tv, and is easily published on anything serving static files, like github pages.

Edit: For some more hobby like projects C# works out quite nicely though. I’d say it’s probably easier to stick with the beaten path here if not seeing a particular advantage from a functional language. I hear F# is quite nice as far as a functional languages go though.

I've been wanting for a while a lightweight Electron alternative that doesn't use web views, just native APIs, and uses Lua instead. So it would be an .exe file that looks for a main.lua somewhere, and runs it, giving access to modules that wrap the Win32 API in high-level functionality. Then you could run a command that combines the .exe and the main.lua into a new .exe file that you can distribute. It would be super lightweight and wouldn't even need a compiler to be installed to be able to make tiny lightweight apps.

The nerd in me just saw a great application of a futamura projection. ;)

So something like LÖVE2D with wrapped Win32 APIs? That would be super cool, I wonder if anyone has done something like that.

I know there are Win32 Lua APIs. Maybe this is a 10 line windows app that just loads those in a host that loads main.lua?

Assuming the GP has equally zero knowledge of both, it would be better to start with WPF.

It might be better to try C# first, if only because tooling as better, especially once you get to UI.

And C# has accumulated quite a few features that are traditionally considered "functional". For example, pattern matching: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csh...

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