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by pjmlp 4153 days ago
> Instead, we get lines like "F# is for scientific computing" or similar spin.

You will never sell the typical VB.NET/C# enterprise .NET developer into F#.

I find very commendable what Microsot has done so far, even if it feels too little.

It rises the visibility of the language, specially to managers and drives CLR design decisions that help FP implementations, like TCO.

Let me know when Oracle gives at very least the same level of support to Scala in Netbeans and JVM design.
1 comments
MichaelGG 4153 days ago
F# doesn't (or didn't) use tailcall in CLR in general, because it was too slow. It only does so as a last resort. Or did that all change? Same with stuff like tuples. We get tons of heap allocations because the CLR did poorly with structs. F# had to even go back on their design because of this, and match the BCL tuple type.

MS doesn't need to sell the typical enterprise dev. They just need to not sour-coat things and be honest and complete in their statements. It'd also be nice if MS viewed shipping actual language independent code, instead of stuff that takes dependencies on C# compiler details.

MS gained a huge amount from the F# folks by getting CLR generics from them - that's one major benefit over the JVM. Just on that alone perhaps they owe them that (maybe, I've little clue of internal politics, except that there is some resentment towards F#, and at least a bit of censorship on publishing things that make C# look poor).

Let me know when Microsoft starts shipping Rust-level features, so we can deal with memory safely and reduce bugs without losing perf.

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pjmlp 4153 days ago
> Let me know when Microsoft starts shipping Rust-level features, so we can deal with memory safely and reduce bugs without losing perf.

Is Rust 1.0 out yet?

They are on Microsoft research.

While the world still isn't ready for the likes of Singularity and IronClad, Spec# and Dafny, at least part of the technology has landed on Windows Phone 8 and .NET Native compilers.

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steveklabnik 4153 days ago
Rust 1.0 is currently slated for 8-14 weeks away: http://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/12/12/1.0-Timeline.html
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pjmlp 4153 days ago
I know, and comparing its current state with what F# offers today doesn't make sense, not today.

In a few years time when Rust has the same eco-system has F# offers today to Windows devs, then we can compare the current state of the languages.

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steveklabnik 4151 days ago
Sorry, I thought you were asking a question, not being rhetorical.
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