VisualFSharp VS ocaml

F# AOT feature tracking

Can't speak to the others, but I'm pretty sure the F# team just doubled or tripled in size (it's still small though). Also the GitHub repo is very active: https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp .

Have you tried the workaround listed here? https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/issues/12239

(deck@steamdeck bin)$ brew install --build-from-source mono ==> Downloading https://github.com/mono/mono/commit/3070886a1c5e3e3026d1077e36e67bd5310e0faa.patch?full_index=1 Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/77885651b42fb3b50e405e300ab4dce5d65e10eac8ee6b8d956b5240b58adcb3--3070886a1c5e3e3026d1077e36e67bd5310e0faa.patch ==> Downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/formula-patches/03cf8088210822aa2c1ab544ed58ea04c897d9c4/libtool/configure-big_sur.diff Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/195208ba31cadc265ea97bb8aad4e78caab1200daf4d855e6c839b5f987f92db--configure-big_sur.diff ==> Downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mono/mono/a22ed3f094e18f1f82e1c6cead28d872d3c57e40/packaging/MacSDK/patches/fsharp-portable-pdb.patch Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/81c9245ab2b5c07a5bc87a8792e374b22a652c14be27b73aa21c1948f1273464--fsharp-portable-pdb.patch ==> Downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mono/mono/a22ed3f094e18f1f82e1c6cead28d872d3c57e40/packaging/MacSDK/patches/fsharp-netfx-multitarget.patch Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/13d3ba5313c9e2b60ebfa4c40d5039269485e75aa41fcf301cc55458382fcb29--fsharp-netfx-multitarget.patch ==> Downloading https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/commit/be6b22d11ae996b2d9b8e0724d9cf05ad65a0485.patch?full_index=1 Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/c3d6a94f53c828d6ad7b5a563682a6de3d388644f3a33f1ea55ec28fa461e24b--be6b22d11ae996b2d9b8e0724d9cf05ad65a0485.patch ==> Cloning https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp.git Updating /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/mono--fsharp--git ==> Checking out tag v11.0.0-beta.20471.5 HEAD is now at 03283e07f Merge pull request #10172 from dotnet/merges/main-to-release/dev16.8 HEAD is now at 03283e07f Merge pull request #10172 from dotnet/merges/main-to-release/dev16.8 ==> Downloading https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mono/mono/3070886a1c5e3e3026d1077e36e67bd5310e0faa/packaging/MacSDK/fsharp-layout.sh Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/85ab59b70661632962989d0527aa31b2a720c49968d45f368ff0a1fa190159b0--fsharp-layout.sh ==> Cloning https://github.com/mono/msbuild.git Updating /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/mono--msbuild--git origin/HEAD set to xplat-master refs/remotes/origin/xplat-master ==> Checking out revision 70bf6710473a2b6ffe363ea588f7b3ab87682a8d HEAD is now at 70bf67104 prevent exception for increasing priority (#5547) HEAD is now at 70bf67104 prevent exception for increasing priority (#5547) ==> Downloading https://download.mono-project.com/sources/mono/mono-6.12.0.122.tar.xz Already downloaded: /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/downloads/6092400166df5dee225b09670c68fa3aa400319e8871facaff0106aa143419fb--mono-6.12.0.122.tar.xz ==> Patching ==> Applying 3070886a1c5e3e3026d1077e36e67bd5310e0faa.patch patching file packaging/MacSDK/fsharp-layout.sh ==> Applying configure-big_sur.diff patching file configure Hunk #1 succeeded at 10928 (offset 2195 lines). ==> ./configure --prefix=/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/mono/6.12.0.122_1 --enable-nls=no Last 15 lines from /home/deck/.cache/Homebrew/Logs/mono/01.configure: checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes checking whether g++-11 accepts -g... yes checking dependency style of g++-11... gcc3 checking for a Python interpreter with version >= 3.2... python checking for python... /usr/bin/python checking for python version... 3.1 checking for python platform... linux checking for python script directory... ${prefix}/lib/python3.10/site-packages checking for python extension module directory... ${exec_prefix}/lib/python3.10/site-packages checking dependency style of gcc-11... gcc3 checking for gawk... (cached) gawk checking how to run the C preprocessor... /lib/cpp configure: error: in `/tmp/mono-20220328-41596-77f8ae/mono-6.12.0.122': configure: error: C preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check See `config.log' for more details READ THIS: https://docs.brew.sh/Troubleshooting

I know csharp got hot-reload for blazor for a while, I also keep tracking on the fsharp issue and hope there is some miracle which can happen. But there is no progress here. So I decide to have a look for what I can do. To make dotnet watch work directly is too hard to me which required a lot of knowledge about FSharp.Compiler.Service and the IL format which csharp roslyn is using for patch the program for hot-reload.

If you get a message like "warning FS3511: This state machine is not statically compilable." don't worry it is being tracked in https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/issues/12038

You can simply contribute to https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp/, the maintainers are very friendly to new contributors in my experience (though the codebase is old and often quite hard to understand).

The F# Programming Language: I consider F# as the functional-oriented sibling of C#. This language offers a nice introduction to statically-typed functional programming. It offers a really nice ML-like syntax, as well as some features like type providers (a way to define a schema for data such as a database table, JSON file, etc.).

> But .mli files do not help with the "no types in the source code" problém

It partially helps since it forces you to have types where they matters most: interfaces.

> And I did not experience any advantage of separate signature files so far,

100kLoc is already quite big! I'm starting to think I'm an outlier since a lot of people don't see the benefits :)

For me, it helps because I really don't want to see the implementation when I use an API. If I need to look at the implementation, it means the interface isn't well specified. All I need should be in the interface: types, docs, (abstract) types. And no more.

Typically, an .ml file will have more than what is exported, types won't be abstract but will have a concrete implementation, and type signatures may be missing. How would it feels like to use list if only https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/stdlib/list.ml was available, instead of https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/stdlib/list.mli?

Haskell tells you what is exported from a module, but it only shows you the names. To see the signatures, you need to rely on generated doc.

Arguably, since OCaml has includes, it suffers from the same problem, your ".mli" may have tons of include and it becomes harder to see what's exported without an external tool

> It partially helps since it forces you to have types where they matters most: exported functions

But the problém the OP has is not knowing the types when reading the source (in the .ml file).

> How would it feels like to use list if only https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/stdlib/list.ml was available,

If the signature where in the source file (which you can do in OCaml too), there would be no problem - which is what all the other (for some definition of "other") languages except C and C++ (even Fortran) do.

No, really, I can't see a single advantage of separate .mli files at all. The real problém is that the documentation is often worse too, as the .mli is autogenerated and documented afterwards - and now changes made later in the sources need to be documented in the mli too, so anything that doesn't change the type often gets lost. The same happens in C and C++ with header files.

If you have been in the Ruby community for the past couple of years, it's possible that you're not a super fan of types or that this concept never passed through your mind, and that's totally cool. I myself love the dynamic and meta-programming nature of Ruby, and honestly, by the time of this article's writing, we aren't on the level of OCaml for type checking and inference, but still, there are a couple of nice things that types with sorbet bring to the table:

Looks like there have been proposals to eliminate use of 3 operand lea in OCaml code (not accepted sadly):

https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/8531

Haskell and Agda are probably the most obvious examples. Ocaml too, but it is much older, so its type system is not as categorical. There is also Idris, which is not as well-known but is very cool.

That does sound problematic, but without the code it is hard to tell what is the issue. Typically, compiling a 6kLoc file like https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/typing/typecore.ml takes 0.8 s on my machine.

NEAT is a fascinating algorithm. I've been interested in it ever since SethBling made a video about it playing Mario and this series of experiments about a variant of NEAT that evolves in real-time rather than by-generation. I'm finally getting to be just good enough of a programmer that I am actually considering writing my own (probably in OCaml because there's an unfortunate lack of NEAT implementations in functional programming languages).

easier than haskell and easier for writing compilers: https://ocaml.org/