F# 3.0 Developer Preview Now Available

I agree. F# and Scala are on the right track. Previous attempts to build total ecosystems around functional languages were too ambitious. In a mixed environment like this they can be allowed to shine doing the things they do best and programmers can ease their way into new paradigms with working code and familiar tools and libraries.

Unfortunately I think Scala is a little too indebted to Java/JVM and tries a little too hard to match the syntactic flexibility of Ruby. A Scala-- would be an easier sell, I think.

I'd argue that F# is especially well-suited for a system with tons of components talking to each other. You have things like async workflows and message-passing built-in, along with the ability to do everything C# can do. I've been using F# to write such a system and I prefer it greatly to C#.

The only .NET thing I would recommend C# over F# for is UI.

From the linked article: "The type provider connects to the database automatically and uses this for IntelliSense and type information".

It can be used with MVC, but the problem is MVC is still C# centric - as in the scaffolding bits that it generates are C# (or VB).

There's also the question of Razor supporting F#, which is not yet there. I remember somebody spiking some code for that, not sure if it's usable.

You can still write all your controllers in F#; but if your front-end is C#(razor), and if your data access is in L2S or EF, then F# feels like added baggage. Still could be useful in some occasions.

Yup, I even wrote a framework to convert F# to javascript which allowed me to create a new (really powerful) validation provider for MVC. Sadly I haven't had a real world project that fit it well, so it's kind of gone by the wayside.

It's fairly straight forward to use with MVC, though it's less than ideal. You basically need to have a C# MVC project that referneces your F# projects (these would contain your controllers etc.)