Re: F# fsharp

On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Douglas Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> Brandon,
>
>For example, what were you looking for in an interpreter?

Scalability with respect to compilation.  If I write some code and run
it through an interpreter, and it turns out to be slow enough that I
notice a problem, then as a first pass optimization, I'd like to
change it into compiled code.  I suppose this can be accomplished
easily enough with F#, C# + Mono, or Lua .NET.  I don't know if the
performance gains are sufficient for Lua .NET, I haven't looked that
up.  The scalability is not easy to accomplish when using an
interpreted language and native C++.  One has to do a lot of work
converting between languages.  This may not be as much of a problem
with respect to Squirrel; I know that it interfaces to C++ better than
Lua, but I don't know about translating to C++.

Maturity of support.  F# ships with an interpreter out of the box in
VS10, although I would expect the usual "first MS product" pitfalls.
IronPython does not have that same level of support, that's why it's
not included in VS10.  I don't really know about Lua .NET.  Squirrel
is a new kid on the block with a small support team.

Ease of interop at the language boundary.  If you're using only 1
language, there's a lot less to worry about, crossing from compiled to
interpreted code.

Speed of builds.  Editing code on the fly and not having to wait for a
build is a boost to developer productivity.  In native C++
development, changing header files definitely triggers recompliation,
sometimes tons of recompilation.  Changing a single source file may or
may not be noticeable.  Link times can definitely be noticeable,
depending on how the app is structured.

Semantic expressiveness.  F# beats C# here, even if both are scalable
with respect to compilation.  If you ignore the "expert level" aspects
of F#, it actually looks like a scripting language, with syntactical
support for higher level constructs such as lists and pattern
matching.  C# does not.  C# looks like Java.

Metaprogramming.  This is a core strength of functional programming
languages; really, what does C# have to say here?  Lua probably does
an ok job of this in its own way, but if I wanted to implement general
purpose DSLs, code translators, or dynamically generated code, F# is
the more powerful toolbox.  I will be using these capabilities for
procedural / dynamic content generation.

> And what are you looking for F# to provide you?

For bonus points, I'll say that I'd like to dump C++ for good.  As the
years go on, my objection to garbage collection gets less and less.  I
first learned C++ 17 years ago.  That's a long time, and it shows in
the language design.  C++ has accumulated tons of higher level cruft
to get things done, that are exceedingly expert oriented.  I haven't
kept up with that and I haven't wanted to.  I've coded C++ defensively
and simplistically, to stay sane.  The only developers who have an
advantage using C++, are those who have been coding it for so many
years, and who have swallowed so much cruft already, that it is second
nature to them.  They tend to say things like "all we need is more
programmer education" as to what's wrong with C++.  Of course they say
that, because they don't need any education, they've already swallowed
it all!

Unfortunately, um, in the meantime Java and C# are pretty dumbed down
languages.  I've never been interested, and they've never become
interesting.  Partly because I just don't care about the web, or about
mobile devices.  The former, because of my 3D ASM biases, has always
been too slow.  The latter, have screens that are too tiny.  They're
both an opportunity to do all the games that have been done to death
forever.

So, several years ago I started up the functional programming learning
curve.  Unfortunately it, aaah, required a lot of programmer education
too.  As an ASM guy it often left me scratching my head and not
caring.  I put it down for awhile.  Now MS has finally shipped a
commercially viable functional programming language.  F# potentially
has dollar signs written on it, whereas previously everything was just
R&D academic stuff, with a few narrow exceptions in some corners of
the computer industry.  It's much easier to justify a learning curve
now, and I'd rather put it into new stuff (FP) than old stuff (C++).


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
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