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Comment by nbevans | Hacker News Reader

WinUI / Project Reunion is just a continuation of the UAP (Universal App Platform) libraries. The support for C# works for F# - just like basically any other C# library can be used from F#. I figure the reason they don't mention F# is because it is obvious and/or implied but perhaps at the same time don't want to infer there is some kind of F#/FP-style syntax.

I wouldn't confuse Project Reunion and the arbitrary Windows Store requirement that apps be compiled with .NET Native. A requirement that, frankly, is on borrowed time anyway and I can't envisage it surviving much longer. Once .NET 6 delivers Mono-style AOT support - .NET Native's sole remaining purpose will cease to exist. Not that modern hardware ever needed it. It was intended for Windows Phones.

If the choice facing us was a simple as you describe then, for example, we wouldn't have ended up building a UWP app in F# back in 2018, would we? Not everything is black and white nor zero sum.

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Good luck with that reasoning when Windows 10X comes out next year.

UWP is still the future of Windows API, Reunion is only lifting it from the Windows kernel, and exposing the respective COM infrastructure on the Win32 side as well.

When I create applications for customers I don't select technologies that require me to place workarounds that might make them repent for having me there in first place.

Hence why as much as I like F#, it is never going to be an option for me, until it has a seat at the table of the official languages.

Apparently that isn't an issue in your case, so good luck with the endeavours.

There is nothing concerning Windows 10X that undermines anything I have said.

UWP is the future of Windows - correct.

I'm not sure any significant part of UWP has ever been in the kernel per se.

It sounds like you're a consultant where taking risks on behalf of your customers, no matter how small or logical the risk, is obviously not part of your job description.

Your offerings of good luck appear to be disingenuous.

Picking F# over official supported languages has zero value on the sales of customers, that is what they care about, not cool software stacks.

So if their IT goes down and the reason is that a risky loving consultant used unofficial workarounds, I rather not get unnecessary phone calls.

As for the wishing luck, I was being honest, take it as you wish.

We've been running F# in production since 2014 - almost 7 years. It is quite shocking to hear anyone imply that F# is not ready for production use - that it is just "cool" tech. (when has F# ever been cool in the minds of the masses?)

I suspect you'll say "7 years is nothing" and maybe it is nothing. But it is still something. It is long enough that we made a couple bad framework/library dependency choices early on and to have learnt lessons from such mistakes.

By far the biggest technical challenge we've faced in that time is the .NET 5 migration - but even that might turn out to be a lot easier than I currently envisage.

On the context of Windows GUI frameworks and UWP, no it isn't ready.

Still no VS or Blend tooling support, no project templates and .NET Native requires workarounds with stuff that most corporate enterprise developers don't care to learn.

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