[avinium]

I think that's not entirely fair. While MS could definitely invest more resources in F#, I wouldn't say it's been neglected (or dying). Just to mention a few developments in recent years: 1) IDE support via Ionide in VS Code 2) Easy install with NuGet 3) cross-platform FSI supported via NET Core 4) some pretty cool updates recently around anonymous records, optional yields, nameof (just to mention a few) 5) no breaking changes (I'm aware of, anyway)

I'd say the future looks pretty bright for F#. It's really resonating with an audience that wants "functional where I want, but practical where I need".

[snagglegaggle]

I tend to agree with OP. I do see some improvements in F#, but a lot of effort porting those back into C#. I'm not sure if there's any pull away from F# for that effort, but there may be.

[narimiran]

> 3) cross-platform FSI supported via NET Core

Last time I tried, I couldn't get FSI working on Linux without Mono. Did something change recently?

[avinium]

Yes, this is a recent-ish change. FSI is available under .NET Core 3 Preview, and someone recently mentioned that it's working under 2.2 too.

[pjmlp]

As long as that audience doesn't need any UI, SQL or application architecture design related Visual Studio tooling.

[avinium]

In all fairness, I haven't touched Visual Studio (for either F# or C# dev) in at least 18 months, so you're probably right.

That being said, UI isn't a strength on .NET to begin with, so I think it's unfair to point that criticism at F#. Uno seems to doing some great things though.

The F# SQL type provider, however, is great. For those who don't know, this generates design- and compile-time types based on your (live) DB schema, enabling auto-complete and compile-time type checking for SQL queries. I do agree that Ionide/VS Code support isn't quite there yet.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what you're referring to by "application architecture design".

It's definitely not perfect - I never claimed otherwise. I'm just saying that everything points to MS increasing support for F#, not the opposite.

[pjmlp]

> UI isn't a strength on .NET to begin with

Sorry but remark only reveals lack of knowledge of what Forms, WPF and UWP are capable of, their related tooling and component libraries from the likes of Telerik, DevExpress, ComponentOne, among others.

Practically most modern Windows applications are mix of .NET and C++ libraries accessed via C++/CLI, P/Invoke or COM/UWP.

Plain old Win32 is left for legacy, games and a couple of unicorns like Adobe's Photoshop.

Application architecture design are the tools available in Visual Studio Enterprise for end-to-end application development, and modeling mapping into code modules, also known as Application Lifecyle Management.

[avinium]

> Sorry but remark only reveals lack of knowledge of what Forms, WPF and UWP are capable of, their related tooling and component libraries from the likes of Telerik, DevExpress, ComponentOne, among others.

I'm fully aware of WinForms, WPF, UWP, having built applications with all of them at one stage or another.

As far as UI frameworks go, they're serviceable - but no way am I recommending .NET just because of them (well, maybe WinForms if someone's writing that type of application).

Personal opinion, of course.