Why not F# (FSHarp)? I'd like to see F# made a product, who should I talk to?
F# (FSharp) is not a good idea! It is a good idea with a good implementation!
And that's the point! It has integration with Visual Studio and some
good tools with it! It proves it's ability to seamlessly integrate with
.NET technologies; like upcoming linq thing. A multi-paradigm space
that is beautiful, useful and comfortable. There is nothing about it
too scary to be abandoned! It is very accessible : in usage and in it's
concepts. F# is useful! That's my great discovery! It can be used to do the things that need to
be done. Why microsoft is going a wrong way about F#? The next big
language that will bust software developing is F#. Not C# 3.0! Is there
anyone there that learns a bit from Ruby on Rails? Just announce F# an
official supported product. Microsoft can do that. Microsoft announced
many useless and badly developed products officially! Why not to put
some good one on the rail?
I want to see F# in visual studio. I will pay for it. And I want Microsoft grants me for supporting it.
F# will not be "the next big language" over C# 3.0. C# will continue to be the dominant Microsoft programming language because it is much more accessible. Moreover, I'm sure you'll see Microsoft adding F# support to Orcas once the spec moves up to 2.0. Remember that F# is still an MSR project. It does not appear to have been handed over to the product team, yet. It should thus come as no surprise that Orcas does not have F# support, yet. So, be patient and don't freak out. Also, take a look at the Singularity project and read about some of the extensions that the MSR guys have added to C# before you condemn it. It's an excellent language with a proven track record and solid support.
As you said, C# is an excellent language for many things. On the other hand there are some spiffy things that C# makes really difficult.
Calling higher order functions generally force you to cast things all over the place (if you can't use lambda expressions). Currying is quite a bit of trouble. There's no built-in support for Tuples, and the ones you can build are a bit hamstrung compared to the ones in F#. I could go on, but you get the point.
F# isn't going to displace C#, but it would be really nice if it would become an officially supported product.
This is not about underestimating C# or making an attack (of any kind : local, global) on any aspects of that.
C# is good. I write most of my daily codes in it by now.
So It is just about F#; not F# vs C#. When I say F# is the big thing; I have a big picture of a global shifting in programming paradigms in my mind of functional programming(because of maintainability, high level modularity, concurrent programming on upcomming multi core processors in it).
C# 3.0 has that. But I think F# in many situations gives me more of what I want. (Recently I moved one of my [little] projects to Haskell from F#; because of ... ie linux!). At least I can choose a more promissing option in Microsoft space; I mean .NET play ground ... (freak out!!)
...
Maybe I am not a good english writer! If it seems rude any of my words; I appologize.
Best Regards
