Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by redrobein 54 days ago
F# is a good language, but I feel like it's forever stuck in C#'s shadow. A lot of the library code is C# and .NET handmedowns. Not interfaces or libraries crafted with F# in mind, often having no explicit documentation for use with F# either.
2 comments
rienbdj 54 days ago
Translating library usage from C# to F# is pretty mechanical so not sure if specific docs are needed.

The larger issue is the C# community loves OOP so you often have to wrap these libraries into something more “FP” if that’s how you want to work.

Overall it’s far better than having nothing (looking at Haskell, OCaml as much as I enjoy them!)

link
omcnoe 54 days ago
Yeah there is some degree of awkwardness created by the interaction, but I think it’s less about needing specific libraries to map well and more about getting a good understanding of what the interop rules are, and what the shape of the underlying generated output actually looks like.

C# interoperability loosens guarantees (particularly immutability) that F# code normally relies on. There are surprising limits that come up in generics because of how they map to C#.

link