F# in the open source world | Hacker News Reader

F# in the open source world

skillsmatter.com

32 pointsAssociat0r9 comments

F#'s greatest understated value might be in not being part of the Visual Studio ecosystem.

Yes, it can run on Visual Studio, but in principle it is not tainted by the "give me a job" C#/Visual Studio/.Net mentality.

As such, F# developers could consider avenues and form communities which are taken for granted in other environments (Unix, Python, Ruby, etc).

Conversely, though, is there any detraction from F# by not being a close member of that ecosystem? Mono and friends are not as mature or up to speed as the official .NET implementations, right? And CLR libraries and frameworks seem to target the Microsoft toolchain in general, as well. How easy is it to develop cross-platform F# and still take full advantage of all that?

This is an honest question, I've always been curious about the open-source CLR world. It seems like there's a much larger disconnect than there is with the JVM.

I am also curious about the open source CLR world. It appears to be tainted by some weird "commercialism" which I find obvious yet difficult to explain.

By the way, Mono has a C# interpreter and parser (Mono.CSharp, Mono.Cecil) which do (did?) not have a counterpart in .Net, so in that sense at least Mono diverges from .Net, rather than being behind.

I write F# on Windows for a living. However, I don't get this "give me a job" mentality as you say it - is it wrong that c# is a highly sought-after skill in the market?

There's already a tremendous(but small) community behind F# . I've never seen a question on F# go unanswered in most popular forums. With the start of F# foundation and open-sourcing of F#, I am confident F# will survive even if MS drops the ball.

The taint on F# is that it's a Microsoft language - that's enough to make some people never consider it, and that's okay. That baggage is historical.

Someone should get F# to run on the JVM. They can then call it Fava, which will inevitably result in a Chianti web framework.

is it wrong that c# is a highly sought-after skill in the market?

I wouldn't say "wrong", but certainly the fact that C#, in most people's minds, is glued to Visual Studio (and .Net), is more to the advantage of Microsoft, than to the society.

The reason why F# and other .Net languages are not popular in open source is because they are dominated by being part of the .Net ecosystem, not because of "give me a job" mentality...

The Microsoft "tax", in every sense of the word, is anethema to at least grass roots popular expansion into open source, if not to its principles.

Successful or well-known .Net programs are invariably closed source (#). In addition, of the large .Net open source projects I have seen, almost all are entirely developer related.

(#) One notable exception: Keepass 2.0!

I didn't downvote you. I agree with the Microsoft tax, but I think "Successful or well-known .Net programs are invariably closed source" is an unfair exaggeration.

I would love to be corrected, and preferably not a developer-related app!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com