Hi, I’m C# Developer and new to F#. I have many questions about F#.
1- F# have the future?
2- in Enterprise web development, Can I count on F#?
3- generally Which one performs better than the other C# or F#?
Hello,
1 - i do believe F# has a future and the proof is the age of the language, it’s not new and many features of F# go on to C# or other languges as well. For what I remember Don Syme , the creator of F#, developed generics at Microsoft Research and together with a team they brought generics to C# (now you can find them also in typescript). On a presentation from Luca Bolognese (one of the creators of LINQ for C#) from 2008 in vs2008 (An Introduction to Microsoft F# | pdc2008 | Channel 9), I saw that F# already had async/await “similar” pattern via async computation expression and bang operator (!). so you could say that most of “modern” C# comes from F#, and was there long time ago, tuples as well. And then with the Addition of type providers F# really is a modern and sort of un-rivalled language for me.
2a- for enterprise web development F# shines, because it runs on .netcore and it very nicely interoperates with C# projects within the same solution, or as .nuget package. being a CLI language (like C# and vb.net) it can do whatever those other 2 langs can do , and more actually. F# is also OO and has classes, interfaces and inheritance mostly like regular C# and sometimes with much neater code. Checkout Giraffe if you want an Aspnetcore setting but with a functional feeling (inspired by Suave, which is a complete F# server)
2b - also checkout type providers: Sql type provider: Fsharp.Data.SqlClient if you are a “dapper” dev, or FSharp.Data.SqlProvider if you are a EF/dbContext dev, or Json type provider from F# data, and you will automatically find an enterprise usage of F# . I believe it’s amazing
2c - ADT types and data/functions separation of F# really shines for domain modeling and ROP programming, as you can check this blog → fsharpforfunandprofit
2d - you can code in microsoft VS, JetBrains rider, VScode, Xamarin studio (now vs for mac) - so one of the best IDE experiences
3a - I don’t think there is major performance differences since F# mostly compiles to .net types, but of course being functional first usually does have performance benefits, especially because concurrency becomes “trivial” .
3b - A peculiar functional style difference is for recursive functions, in C# you cannot really optimize the call stack of a recursive function, wheras if F# if you write a rec function as a tail call function, it will be stack optimized by the compiler, making memory “stack-overflow” exceptions impossible.
to sum-up everything C# can do F# can do, but the opposite is not true 
, i suggest give F# a try (i suggest with type providers) and don’t be afraid by small differences, i believe a C# dev can get up to speed to basic F# in 1 week and also F# has more similarities for js and python devs as well in many things (REPL, and higher order function names for example - filter, map, etc)
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amazing! Especially when used alongside the C# language.
thank you very much
If you’re new to, and/or not that experienced in, F# then, as jkone37 says, type providers are an excellent practical way into it that don’t require you to be an instant guru. I’m always telling C# devs about that feature, as it’s something simple you can do in F# that you can’t in C#.
If you’re doing web development I would also recommend the canopy library for simple web automation and optional UI testing. You can use it knowing almost zero F# and zero Selenium!
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In addition to the other answers, I would like to emphasize F#'s biggest secret: F# contains all of C#! Meaning you can do all you are currently doing in C# directly in F# (classes, inheritance, etc). The advantage of this approach is that you adopt the functional parts of F# incrementally. If you go the other route, meaning using a functional approach directly, you’ll have a much steeper learning path.
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No, F# does not support partial class. I do not undestand this feature because in C# 1 WinForms Designer work without it. Now partial uses in source generators and many user cases.
Type provider works not so good as wanted. I think better at start coding makes types described domain problem because data control flow. But type provider often complexy setup and weakly support autocomplete. Remark for example System.Text.Json prefect works with F# records like this
type Person = {
first_name:string
items : list<string>
}
Partial classes serve a very specific purpose concerning code generation in C#. The solutions don’t apply directly to F# (there is no WinForms designer which deals with F# code for example).
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