[rubber_duck]

I honestly wish this was true but I doubt it. F# is different enough to have a big curve, and yet the benefits aren't immediately tangible, it's just a bunch of small things that add up - but try selling that to someone. Meanwhile mainstream languages are picking up features from it (eg. C# will eventually have record types and pattern matching). I think languages like this will influence the mainstream but I don't see them being mainstream in the future.

[vivainio]

Huh, the benefits are immediately tangible, the biggest one being less code to do the same thing while remaining typesafe.

In the meantime, you probably need slightly, but not massively, better developers.

[rubber_duck]

The problem is that F# leads to shorter code by being incrementally better all over the place - so every example you show to someone he'll go "oh that's cute but I can do something similar with C#" but when you sum up those "cute tricks" you end up with 1/3 code, much less noise, and easier to maintain code. But it's hard to sell because there's no "one big thing that is 3x better than C#".

[jackmott]

I don't think you need better developers. I've had one college intern so far that I've had work with some F# and she liked it better than C#.

Lots of stuff that is easier to do. Not much that is harder.

[rubber_duck]

When you don't know a lot learning something different is actually easier than when you're already proficient in C#. You expect an intern to take x ammount of time before he can be productive, so if he spends it on learning how to do it with F# or C# it won't change the x much. But when you have a senior who knows how to do something with C# he will not want to invest ammount similar to x, even a 1/2 of the time, because he can get it done with what he knows.

Like I said to OP F# doesn't have that "hard sell", it's just a bunch of incremental improvements that end up being a big deal together, but each one on it's own is unimpressive.

[vivainio]

You rarely have Tabula Rasa developers - average developer is probably proficient in Java and/or C#.

I would say HM type inference is a non-incremental "hard sell" improvement, but it depends on the target audience :).

[celdon25]

As a developer with 10 years of C# experience and two weeks (and counting) of F# experience, I'm already finding it easier and more enjoyable to do a lot of things in F#. Results may vary.

[rjbwork]

Sorry to keep shilling this, but it seems to keep coming up lately - exhaustive pattern matching library in pure C# https://github.com/Jagged/OneOf - https://www.nuget.org/packages/DiscU