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The 2025 Developer Survey results are in. Explore insights into technology and tools, careers, community and more. View results.

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    Flat-out assertion: a language you can learn that fast isn't worth adding to a business development mix. The point in F# is to write functional code, and most people aren't going to learn functional programming that fast. Commented Dec 29, 2010 at 19:11
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    Flat-out counter example: LINQ. Writing functional code is absolutely not the point of F#, by either definition of "functional". In the context of existing C# devs, they should already be half way there with System.Func.
    – J D
    Commented Dec 29, 2010 at 20:13
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    If F# is not primarily about functional programming, then what is it really about? How do you know when F# is a better fit than, say, C#? Commented Jan 3, 2011 at 21:19
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    @Robert: F# offers a variety of features that can make it much more productive than C#. Variant types and pattern matching are hugely powerful for creating and manipulating trees, which appear in everything from compilers to computer graphics. Type inference makes it easy to write heavily generic code, which is ideal for dense algorithmics. The interactive sessions are ideal for disposable code, like massaging data sets from one form to another or even doing sophisticated analysis. These features are only incidentally related to functional programming and all work well in imperative code.
    – J D
    Commented Jan 5, 2011 at 19:38