[miloandmilk]

This 1000 times.

I have been learning F# for a while now, and while the functional side that is pushed heavily is a joy to use, anything that touches the 'outside world' is going to have way more resources for C# as far as libraries, official documentation, general information including tutorials etc. You will need to understand and work with those.

So you really do need to understand C# syntax and semantics. Additionally there are a few concepts that seem the same in each language but have different implementations and are not compatible (async vs tasks, records) so there is additional stuff to know about when mentally translating between C# and F#.

I really want to love F# but keep banging my head against the wall. Elixir while not being typed yet and not being as general purpose at least allows me to be productive with it's outstanding documentation, abundance of tutorials and books on both the core language and domain specific applications. It is also very easy to mentally translate erlang to elixir and vice versa in the very few occasions needed.

[akra]

Its ironic that the thing that is hard to learn about F# is C#, or more to the point, the patterns/idioms in C# libraries and frameworks. I've seen the same reaction more from people coming from other ecosystems personally working with F#. There's a lot of stuff in C# that people in Java/C# land take for granted that you just don't have to learn in other languages (Javascript, Go, Python, etc) - lots of OOP patterns, frameworks, etc. Staying in the F# lane seems to be easier but can be limiting, but at least you know you won't be stuck if you need an SDK/Library/etc.

The flipside is that adopting F# is less risky as a result - if there isn't a library or you are stuck you can always bridge to these .NET libraries. Its similar I think with other shared runtime languages (e.g. Scala, Kotlin, Clojure, etc). You do need to understand the ecosystem as a whole at some point and how it structures things.

[roetlich]

> I really want to love F# but keep banging my head against the wall.

Yeah. What's your opinion on Gleam?

[miloandmilk]

Gleam from a language perspective seems really nice - but it's in it's ramp up stage, I will go through the Gleam Exrercism track and keep an eye on it. It would be great if it became the general purpose typed pragmatic functional language with a large ecosystem I am after!