F# Is the .NET Rust | Hacker News Reader

F# Is the .NET Rust

jkone27-3876.medium.com

39 pointsbehnamoh13 comments

Completely ridiculous, I don't even know why you would make the comparison at all.

The languages are completely different, have different goals, have different design philosophies and exist in distinct eco systems.

All "similarities" are just rust borrowing a few concepts from functional programming languages and has an integrated tool chain like dotnet has. That is literally it.

Rust is a systems level programming language which aims to provide strong compile time guarantees about memory safety, F# is a functional programming language, which aims to bring that style of programming to .NET. These are totally different categories and claiming that F# does what rust does in the .NET ecosystem is plainly false.

then flag it.

Flagging is for a breaking of the guidelines, not for having a bad take.

bad take / misinformation is a spectrum.

Well you can do systems programming in F#, doing AOT compilation to embedded systems.

https://www.wildernesslabs.co/

Guess when you zoom in very closely to something, a lot of differences appear, and when you zoom out, somethings look similar.

If you step back and just take it as comparing the functional programming concepts in both F# and Rust, then it seemed like a valuable comparison. Just because how they get compiled is different and that they started with different goals, doesn't change how they are similar in programming style. Not sure why making that comparison is invalid.

And. Not sure even your fundamental objections are true anymore. Rust can be compiled to WASM, and F# can be compiled to WASM, does that mean Rust is no longer just for systems programming? Why make such a strong stance, if it isn't a 'system level' then you can't use Rust or compare it to anything else. "you better just use it for system level stuff or else".

All in all, it does seem like you need to take a chill pill. Rust isn't what it used to be, it can be something beyond systems programming.

I love F#, but I swear to god .NET dev's have some type of fundamental confusion when it comes to programming concepts (the exasperation is because I often have to deal with .NET devs given its prevalence in Europe).

F# and Rust are not appropriately or pragmatically comparable. It's like comparing a porsche and a tractor and pointing out they both have doors and engines.

This Porsche doesn’t have doors or an engine. It is a tractor though: https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/products/porsche-mission-e-t...

Maybe F* with dependent types and proof automation? I am programming in SPARK2014 currently and I would argue it is more of a Rust competitor with a longer legacy in high-integrity, safety-critical programming applications.

Would make sense given their shared ML roots

Unrelated, but TS is poorly placed in static/strong plot

I don’t think you can place TS at any particular position. Depending on configuration and usage it occupies almost the whole vertical axis. Its placement on the horizontal axis is dependent mostly on how much you’re willing to suspend disbelief.

A better comparison would probably be F# and OCaml.

F# is based on OCaml, so one would hope there is a lot of comparison.

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