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Comment by ultrahate | Hacker News Reader

I realize that .NET is F#'s biggest strength from the perspective that Microsoft probably holds of trying to push C# more functional, and trying to attract talent from R, Ocaml, Rust, Julia, Haskell, etc, but it also feels like its biggest weakness.

I'd love to see some sort of bootstrapped version that makes use of .NET Native or CoreRT or whatever they use today, and I'd REALLY like to see a strong Stdlib for F# that takes into account what functional programmers are used to.

I've been doing functional programming for several years, and I feel like a moron working with F# because I don't know half of these dumb .NET classes and some of the domain problems don't really leave me able to budget enough time to bootstrap my own solutions OR learn all the .NET stuff I need. Especially not when I can jump into several other languages and have a working prototype often in days or hours.

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Edit: just before somebody starts whining about it, I ain't got no problems with NET on its own, but the barrier to proficiency in it from a functional universe is needlessly high, and if F# had a stronger core it would be something non NET programmers could pick up along the way rather than continuously bash their heads into while doing rather menial work.

I don't want to sound whiny either but it's such a punch in the gut when someone sees me struggling with basic FP stuff in F#, just because I guess I'm so proud of what I've learned about FP in other languages.

There's also some stuff that F# is missing, but it hasn't screwed me yet because I still haven't figured out enough about all the NET classes.

> barrier to proficiency in it from a functional universe is needlessly high

This is sort of a Microsoft M.O.

Well in the past sure, but MS is really pushing that """new leaf""" story, but they're busy fucking up the actual execution of it all.

What is needed is new blood among F# users, not coming from C# background and not too snob about F# not having most advanced type system when compared to Haskell or other similar ML languages.

Then, effort on making functionally orientated base libraries (without relying on baking those things in FSharp.Core, but as set of small libraries) wrapping undelrying .NET APIs, taking inspiration from what is there in Haskell and other similar languages.

Most F# users today are fine relying on mostly .NET libraries + fresher F# libraries, but most projects will be done with a mix of paradigms (which is manageable in F#) which is not most appealing to people with significant FP background.

I agree mostly but I'd argue that most F# devs are coming from c# to begin with. I'd love to see some data suggesting otherwise, but I have a very strong feeling that its true. I also like multi paradigm, doesn't take away from F# at all, but it's something that doesn't mix well with developers not familiar with the NETverse

Perhaps you're missing http://fsprojects.github.io/FSharpx.Extras/ ?

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