Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsizzle | Hacker News Reader

> I like F# because it's the best programming training language I've found.... It still works great for making me think about and become a better programmer, no matter what language I use in everyday work.

I can understand how trying a range of language can make you a better programmer, by better appreciating the dimensions of language design and how it fits together, etc. but I have harder time accepting this stronger, more specific claim. There's not really any support for this claim in the article.

View on HN

Mark Seemann has a good talk on this called the "functional pits of success" -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US8QG9I1XW0

Of all the languages I've used nothing is quite as fun as refactoring an F# app down to nothing. Expressive power is king in F# with the whole .NET ecosystem behind it.

I quite like Mark's way of thinking and stumbled upon his blog several years ago while learning FP with F#. [1]

Especially the series about category theory...

Can also recommend his recently published book "Code that fits in your head".

[1] https://blog.ploeh.dk/

edit: typo

If you like his blog, you surely are gonna enjoy wlashins blog as well. (Making the BIG assumption you don't know it already)

It is THE blog that made me grok a lot of FP.

https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/

Ah yes- superb content on FP/F#! He helped me a long way to understand FP- thanks for mentioning it, I can definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to get into FP / F#!

Does refactoring down to nothing in F# make you a better programmer in other languages? That sounds like you just like programming in F#.

I feel this way about Haskell, and I understand why someone would feel this way about F#. No matter what language I use, I now constantly think about how to avoid side effects, how to minimize mutability, how to ensure my code flow is readable and not cluttered by irrelevancies (notice how the author keeps bringing up "noise"?). It's similar to the way that learning TDD led me to think about testability in every design regardless of language.

That's not to say that pure functional languages is the only way to these lessons, of course.

>I now constantly think about how to avoid side effects, how to minimize mutability, how to ensure my code flow is readable and not cluttered by irrelevancies (notice how the author keeps bringing up "noise"?)

Sure, but you would get that from pretty much any FP language. This article seems to be making claims for F# in particular.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com