[melling]

I didn't downvote him but it sounds like "he's driving angry". He does work for that "evil" company in Redmond. :-). Maybe he can help make F# a great cross-platform language and increase the goodwill? Microsoft did an incredible job with F# but it really only runs well on Windows.

[makeitsuckless]

If he works for MS he has zero right to even be mildly annoyed, since we have for decades been living in a world where "only runs on Windows" isn't even in the small print.

[saidajigumi]

I've run into some (but def. not all) current and former MS folks who carry this ironic shoulder-chip. One such indignantly complained about a major open-source project's janky Windows support something like "well, that's just because they choose not to support the platform!"

I found this really interesting, as after a bit of conversation, the speaker was clearly unaware of how MS' technical and business models around Windows have impeded open source work. A for-pay operating system with a profit-center development toolchain presents a very large barrier to Unix-centric OSS projects. Not to mention the numerous technical impedance mismatches between the $unix and Windows worlds. (And these days we have tools like libuv to help with that, but still.)

[MichaelGG]

What particular problems on non-Windows do you have with F#? I've been running F# applications in telecom, in production, on Mono, for several years.

F# doesn't really seem to be the factor there at all, it's just general .NET support. In fact, F# can do a bit better than C#, as F# actually includes a static linker.

[melling]

Strange, most blogs that I've read discuss the pain involved.

http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/06/06/f-sharp-mono-unix/

I guess it's the same with any new product or language: when there are a lot more great testimonials than cries of pain, then it's actually safe to use that product.

[MichaelGG]

Those complaints mostly seem to be about the developer experience on Mac, which, yeah might suck. I use VS + vim, build on Windows, then copy over to Linux for deployment.

The biggest issue is with complicated frameworks, like ASP.NET, since there could be all sorts of runtime things missing. Fortunately with MS's new open source kick, this should be a thing of the past relatively soon,

[melling]

So, you just told me to buy a Windows machine. Kind of funny because our little subthread started because the Microsoft F# developer didn't want to be told to buy a Linux or Mac.

The world we're all looking for is one where we'd all like to mix and match our software as much as possible, and not be told to buy a different computer.

[MichaelGG]

Fair enough; I went off track just about running (executing) F# code.

[BinaryIdiot]

But they're already working on doing that.

[melling]

I didn't say they weren't. I imagine the project needs lots of help. Is there an ETA? Will the ports be kept in sync with the Windows versions so we don't need to wait years for updates? It's a lot of work.

[BinaryIdiot]

> Is there an ETA?

I think their goal was a year for everything under .Net to get ported but I don't know off hand. You can already use it via Mono if you wanted to play with it today.

> Will the ports be kept in sync with the Windows versions so we don't need to wait years for updates?

It's all being opened sourced. Every week Microsoft open sources more of their .Net platform and language tools. It will be compilable on all platforms. So yes.

[tacticus]

And every court case fights to close off other things.