What I wish I knew when learning F#

Re:What I wish I knew when learning F# by kevinmgranger on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:40AM (#28864906)

I think it's really hard to properly define "functional programming" concretely, but I'll partially agree. If all a language takes from FP is:

- make composition ergonomic, idiomatic, and easy (including the usual iterator map/reduce, etc.)

- let the type system protect you (including nullability)

Then you've already got the most important strengths, in my opinion.

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Re:What I wish I knew when learning F# by grumpyprole on Thursday October 14, 2021 @12:30PM (#28866441)

Functional programming is not just programming with closures. It's about "referential transparency". Referential transparency permits higher-level mathematical reasoning, which leads to safer/better program composition, optimisations, caching/reuse and parallelisation/concurrency. If you are willing to concede mutable-state and other uncontrolled effects, there is much to be gained.

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Re:What I wish I knew when learning F# by DeathArrow on Friday October 15, 2021 @01:55AM (#28874766)

You might mean "enforced referential transparency" by having immutable variables and no I/O. Otherwise most languages allow you to have pure functions and nothing forces you to mutate state.

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Re:What I wish I knew when learning F# by dboreham on Thursday October 14, 2021 @12:43PM (#28866618)

Citation needed.

<ducks>

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