[wrnr]

I bet C# and F# are actually nice languages and I shortly considered adopting them together with Unity but at the end of the day I was still suspicious of Microsoft, and support for other platforms then windows. The article honestly sounds a bit like a straw man argument. Maybe bloomberg could have made another tech choice but then again I don't know the details.

[verisimilidude]

If you’re a JavaScript dev, it’s worth noting that NPM is owned by Microsoft. The mistrust angle is real, but I think it’s moot when specifically talking .NET vs. JS.

[cosmotic]

Microsoft has first-party support for .NET on linux and it's open source. Their commitment to non-windows and non-.NET platforms has only increased over time.

[bm3719]

They also have a history of randomly deciding to dump a technology (including full languages) too, leaving those invested in it holding the bag.

I like F# too, but I'll stick with one of it's non-MS controlled alternatives.

[ihateolives]

For running, yes. For developing, no.

[moonchrome]

I've been working in .NET for the last year using intel Mac for the first 6 months exclusively and recently switching between Windows desktop and Mac (performance of desktop machine mostly, not willing to be early adopter with M1/2)

I also use Rider exclusively and going to Visual Studio on Windows now and then I'm not missing much (visual studio did have some nice plugin for debugging compiler plugins, had to hack around than in Rider)

I can't comment on Unity part.

F# for me overpromises and underdelivers - it all sounds amazing in theory but it's been 3 times over the last decade where I've tried to use it (last time just a few months ago) and it never just works - I've spent diagnosing "why isn't this F# feature working as advertised" than solving my problem (from tooling like F# projects breaking autocomplete in VS solution - even for C# projects, to language features like type providers just being a nightmare to work with and integrate into CI/CD)

[throw868788]

Honestly I've found F# pretty OK to use compared to some other languages, especially when not using Visual Studio on a non-Windows machine where F# IMO is the better choice. Given a cross-development experience in some of the more recent .NET teams I've been in (great that this is finally occurring btw) especially the Mac developers using VS Code prefer F#. After using it the feedback is that the experience on F#, especially since with F# Resharper is not necessary to function/develop, is preferable over C# (i.e. "its more of a scripting language").

My observation is that the ex JS/Ruby/etc devs learning curve's seem to favor F# over C# as it is more like these languages. There's just a lot less to learn, and the coding style (e.g. modules, function first, etc) is more synonymous with langs like JS than heavy OO languages. I've recently inherited a team that moved to .NET from JS, and getting them to try C# has been painful especially when using things like ASP.NET. There's a lot of knowledge I just took for granted - we don't realise how much knowledge is required to use standard Java/C# OO in a production like setting that many dev's stumbled on when they were junior but have long forgotten the learning curve they went through. They tend to be framework heavy/dependent and require much more experience. From patterns (what's a strategy, repository, etc etc), to dep injection frameworks, to which refactoring tools I need, etc, etc - where in F# in my recent experience the experience is more, but still not quite "just code and work it out as you go".

The pit of success favors F# over C# in my experience with these teams especially if you keep it simple with the features used.

My experience has been that F# appeals to coders who are using the .NET platform coming from languages like JS/Go/etc but also has static typing who usually at least in the jobs I've been in are often on a Mac. C# dev's typically come from Java/C# enterprise kind of shops. Not one is better than the other and I will work in whatever space has interesting problems to solve - I think the difference is more cultural than technical.