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> In other words, I think the language is way ahead of the libraries and tooling - there is so much more that can be done (and is being done) using F# as-is!

I completely agree!

I wish I had more upvotes to give, since I'd give your comment the most if it were possible. I agree that there are some omissions from the community here, especially Ionide (which I personally use in addition to Visual Studio). I should probably do a video showing a breadth of F# tooling and libraries for F#, because it really is a great landscape where you can pick the tools and libraries based on their merit, rather than being stuck with one particular set of tools.

VS Code and Ionide work really well together. There are some slight issues like the loss of syntax highlighting in certain cases, but that is a really small issue. I am using this combination on a GalliumOS chromebook and it works out of the box in like 10 or 15 minutes:

- install VSCode and then Ionide

- install .net core

- install mono (i believe ionide still uses mono)

- install node and npm and then yeoman

- install the aspnet generator for yo

- "yo aspnet" will give the option to generate a working ASP.NET F# website

> VS Code and Ionide work really well together

Not in my experience. Never since it appear the setup have worked for me, not even once.

I try again last week. I need to copy-paste the .sh script from github because the one it generate was wrong.

P.D: I don' use yeoman. NPM bloat is not my style: I follow the MS tutorial:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/articles/fsharp/tuto...

The tutorial you linked is for developing against mono using Paket and FAKE. I also found it difficult to work with F# and mono. My recent and positive experience was with developing against .net core.

Also, you don't need to use yeoman, "dotnet new --lang F#" produces a blank F# .net core project and then you can add all of the dependencies manually.

Awkward person in the video AND author of that tutorial here...

I'd love to learn more about what went wrong in setup. Keeping that article up to date and, more importantly, correct is a priority of mine, because I really want people to learn about Ionide and F#.

I just follow the tutorial on OSX. Then I try to do the first build and get:

> build.sh: line 34: syntax error: unexpected end of file

So I delete the last empty line, and get:

> build.sh: line 33: syntax error near unexpected token `fi'

I don't see any wrong with the script (I don't know bash scripting). So I go to the github site and just copy from https://github.com/ionide/ionide-vscode-fake/blob/master/bui...

And it work.

This is the diff:

    diff -r 8b6c97c12f6e build.sh
    --- a/build.sh  Fri Dec 09 20:27:05 2016 -0500
    +++ b/build.sh  Fri Dec 09 20:27:50 2016 -0500
    @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
     then
       # use .Net

    -  .paket/paket.bootstrapper.exe
    +  .paket/paket.bootstrapper.exe  prerelease
       exit_code=$?
       if [ $exit_code -ne 0 ]; then
        exit $exit_code
    @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
        exit $exit_code
       fi

    -  packages/FAKE/tools/FAKE.exe $@ --fsiargs build.fsx
    +  packages/FAKE/tools/FAKE.exe $@ --nocache --fsiargs build.fsx
     else
       # use mono
       mono .paket/paket.bootstrapper.exe
    @@ -29,5 +29,5 @@
       if [ $exit_code -ne 0 ]; then
        exit $exit_code
       fi
    -  mono packages/FAKE/tools/FAKE.exe $@ --fsiargs -d:MONO build.fsx
    +  mono packages/FAKE/tools/FAKE.exe $@ --nocache --fsiargs -d:MONO build.fsx
     fi
    \ No newline at end of file

It's probably line ending problem. Running something like dos2unix on `build.sh` would probably fix it.

I was watching a Dot Net Rocks video[1] from 2012 with Don Syme being interviewed about the release of F# 3.0 and they ask him what's planned for F# 4.

He says that what devs are telling them is that the language is good, but they want better tools, so he wouldn't be opposed to a solid maintenance release just around improving tooling (but nothing is planned yet).

So the day after watching that, four years after the video, it's a bit weird to find you saying "F# 4 and now F# 4.1 - the language is way ahead of the tooling".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvYyI4kG1Vo