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Enabling Contributions to the Visual F# IDE Tools

39 points| pcj | 11 years ago |blogs.msdn.com | reply

11 comments

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[+] kvb|11 years ago|reply
It's an exciting time to be an F# programmer. The community really seems to be stepping up and getting ready to make important contributions.
[+] xvilka|11 years ago|reply
Just Microsoft's rebrand and restricted version of OCaml. And, imho, it is much better to use original language (since it have much more features), especially with Core library.
[+] kvb|11 years ago|reply
While F# was definitely strongly influenced by OCaml, their features have diverged significantly. For example, F# has type providers, active patterns, and units of measure (though you're also right that OCaml has lots of features that F# doesn't, like first class modules).

Note also that this blog post is about accepting contributions to the Visual Studio IDE components for F#, not for the language itself (which has been open source for many years, and has already been accepting contributions from the community for a little while).

[+] zem|11 years ago|reply
i just want to note that as far as i've seen, the ocaml community has little to no animosity towards f#. there are lots of ML dialects out there and the prevailing mood seems to be one of cooperation rather than competition - it's nice to see people explore the design space.
[+] brandonbloom|11 years ago|reply
I mean, sure, you can use OCaml... unless you want/have to interop with .NET, then it doesn't matter how much you like OCaml, it's not going to solve your problem.
[+] CmonDev|11 years ago|reply
Please tell us how much time would it take you to build an OCAML app that would target: web, Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, Windows (desktop, store, phone), PS4 etc.?