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Comparison of F# with C#
f#functionalc#

Hi if anybody is interested I have created a small article where I

compare F# and C# arrays and explore a bit the functional programming

style with C#.

My Blog

Perhaps some C# guys will be attracted by F# after reading this ;-)

Yours,

Alois Kraus

.

I enjoyed both your article and the lively, thoughtful responses to it, but I'm not sure that what seemed to become a main issue, how hard F# is to learn, is a significant one, for F# or any programming language.

I've used about twenty programming languages professionally over the past thirty years. None of them were particularly hard to learn, but all of them took time to learn well. I think this is the experience of most programmers. We aim initially for competence, then work gradually toward mastery. Over time, many things that at first seem overly complicated or arcane become so natural that we don't give them a second thought, because it isn't the language, it's our unfamiliarity with it, that makes things seem obscure.

No language is perfect, but I find F# less imperfect than many others. It makes so many things so much easier to program that I haven't really noticed if it's been easy or hard to learn. It's certainly been fun.

By on 6/1/2006 6:37 PM ()

Thank you James for good press ;-). I think the major obstacle for me

while learing F# is that there are very few well documented sample

applications out there. The Wiki does help a bit but since I have never

dealt with functional programming languages before (I did study nuclear

physics) I have a hard time getting the loose ends together. The little

samples do help but show most of the time only one aspect. E.g creating

an array is very well explained in the Wiki but there is no good

example how I get the items of the array out and print them to console.

A more complete walk through would lower the barrier for beginners

significantly. You are right that there are many other functional

languages around I would not touch with a pole since they are less

perfect than F# ;-). I prefer using the best tools available and F# is

a shiny new hammer to which I have not found the matching nails to

hammer them into my problems yet. I am getting better at this thing and

hope to master it in a not too far away future.

Yours,

Alois Kraus

By on 6/5/2006 1:35 PM ()

I know what you're talking about! I fell in love with F# as soon as saw it in January. Getting comfortable with it was easy, but going farther, based on sample programs and disparate Web publications, has been a lot of work, and I'm still not where I want to be. It's been a lot of fun, but quite frustrating.

One of my goals at Apress is to publish books that lower the barriers for beginners and make it as easy to learn F# as it is to use it, so this wonderful language will get the acceptance it deserves. I'm currently editing two books, for publication in the first half of 2007. They will undoubtedly make F# much easier to master.

I'm now considering what an F# book for absolute beginners, not just in functional programming but in any kind of programming, should cover. Any ideas on what you'd like to see in such a book will be greatly appreciated.

By on 6/10/2006 1:26 PM ()

Ok its 1:07 AM so do not expect too much. I really would buy a book

like Practical functional programming with F#. The content that comes

to my mind would be:

- Function Programming: Why?

- What are its main uses?

- Introduction to F#

- Arrays (storing and the many ways of getting the data out of them)

- Lists dito

- Functions how to define them (named, anonymous, curried functions) and its uses

- In/Output How to open a file, SQL Server Connection, How printf differes from String.Format

- Multithreading

- How can you benefit from multithreading without any side effects (practical example)

- A collection of commonly encountered code that is the recommended (best) practice to a common problem

- F# and algorithms (e.g. Quicksort, ...)

- Some final words about performance

- Documentation guidelines

Thats all after a little brainstorming. But I am sure there is much

more that would be interesting. I expect volume 1/10 to see soon ;-).

Yours,

Alois Kraus

By on 6/12/2006 4:17 PM ()

Hi,

I made my response here: [link:strangelights.com]

It is ment to be a healthy discustion, rather than a flame so I hope you take no office by it.

Thanks,

Rob

By on 5/29/2006 4:01 PM ()

Nice article. It would be nice to have seen more F# comparison code - the C# code just goes on and on. I also posted a short comment to the article.

By on 5/28/2006 4:42 PM ()

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