[mikaeluman]

I like the ML languages, and as many others I spent a lot of time with F#.

I would love to spend more time but even though Microsoft gives it plenty of support (nowhere near as much as C#), the community is just too small (and seems to have gotten smaller).

Looking at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ numbers fall off pretty quickly from the top 5-7.

Guessing this is the same for OCaml, even if the language as such is nice.

[throwa567543]

Anecdotally we are using F# more than ever before, and it works for us for a large sized organisation. Fast code, it is keeping up with the .NET features that matter for that (e.g. spans), and tbh has still been getting better over the years. In fact I find some of the new features like Span, SIMD/intrinsics somewhat synergise with existing F# features (e.g. inline). C# IMO still hasn't quite caught up but is getting there. Comparing to Go/Java/etc I can usually get faster code out of the .NET runtime as well especially in our domain which requires large scale computation. If I was to move to something else for our domain it would be C++ or Rust. F# piggy backing of the .NET platform in general, has a decent ecosystem and easy onboarding cross platform and gets a lot "for free" (e.g. CLI, GC improvements).

Community is an interesting thing, and for some people I guess it is important. For me language is just a tool having coded for quite some time and seen communities come and go; don't care about being known or showing an example per se. If the tool on the balance allows me to write faster code, with less errors quicker and can be given to generic teams (e.g. ex Python, JS devs) with some in house training its a win. For me personally I just keep building large scale interesting systems with F#; its a tool and once you get a hang of its quirks (it does have some small ones) quite a good one that hits that sweet spot IMO.

My feeling however is with AI/LLM's communities and syntax in general is in decline and less important especially for niche languages. Language matters less than the platform, ecosystem, etc. Its easier to learn a language then ever before for example, and get help from it. Any zero cost abstraction can be emulated with more code generation as well as much as I would hate reviewing it. More important is can you read the review the code easily, and does the platform offer you the things you need to deliver software to your requirements or not and can people pick it up.

[mikaeluman]

Interesting take. I agree with you mostly but regarding "community" I am more thinking of the side effects there in terms of _other_ people developing interesting libraries etc.

I don't know if AI can change that but when using python, there is a feeling that there is an awesome quality library for just about anything.

[throwa567543]

I get that, which is why I said it is important for some people depending on the domain and I meant in general language communities. Python is different at least to me given AI and being the first target for not just software improvements but hardware usage (e.g. GPU accelerated specialised libs) and training materials/examples. It is the AI community not the Python community per se; the AI community just targets Python. JS is also a little different given browsers are so ubiquitous and their own target with JS being the main language that works there.

Otherwise in most mainstream platforms there is enough libraries for most things already; which includes .NET. It's rare not to find a well maintained lib for the majority of use cases in general whether it is .NET, Java, Go, etc which is why w.r.t long term risk a used platform is more important than the syntax of a language and its abstractions. Web frameworks, SDK's, DB drivers, etc etc are all there and generally well tested so you won't be stuck if you adopt F#. I evaluate on more objective metrics like performance, platform improvements, compatibility with other software/hardware, etc etc. It isn't that risky to adopt F# IMO (similar risk to .NET in general) - to me its just another syntax/tool in my toolbelt with some extra features than usual if I'm developing things typical in that .NET/Java/Go abstraction level.