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F#

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399
Perl

3.5K
933
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575
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F# vs Perl: What are the differences?

Developers describe F# as "Strongly-typed, functional-first programming language for writing simple code to solve complex problems". F# is a mature, open source, cross-platform, functional-first programming language. It empowers users and organizations to tackle complex computing problems with simple, maintainable and robust code. On the other hand, Perl is detailed as "Highly capable, feature-rich programming language with over 26 years of development". Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.

F# and Perl can be primarily classified as "Languages" tools.

"Pattern-matching" is the top reason why over 40 developers like F#, while over 62 developers mention "Lots of libraries" as the leading cause for choosing Perl.

F# and Perl are both open source tools. It seems that F# with 2.09K GitHub stars and 341 forks on GitHub has more adoption than Perl with 435 GitHub stars and 152 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Perl has a broader approval, being mentioned in 133 company stacks & 64 developers stacks; compared to F#, which is listed in 19 company stacks and 16 developer stacks.

Advice on F# and Perl
Needs advice
on
GolangGolangPerlPerl
and
RustRust

I intend to use a programming language which I'll use as AWS runtime and write a script that will comb through tons of files in a directory and its subdirectories and search for simple text regular expressions and process and write the matches in a file as output. I have heard that Perl is good for regex based search but I also want the performance to be good as it will have to go through tons of files for IO. In this post: https://filia-aleks.medium.com/aws-lambda-battle-2021-performance-comparison-for-all-languages-c1b441005fd1, I see that Rust works well as AWS Lambda runtime with very good performance. Which one should I choose as my AWS lambda runtime for this problem? Golang is also an option as it is fast as per the above link.

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I used to work in a Perl shop and must admit that the language is very simple for tasks like these, but as you mentioned it's not fast at execution time. I'm now a Go programmer professionally but I taught myself the language while in college purely out of interest and eventually found my way to the job, not the other way around. I've recently been learning a little rust because of how much that language comes up in conversations around Go. I find the concept of the borrow checker nice but I have to admit I feel lost like I am in most flavors of new fancy framework js. That's not to say Rust is really anything like js, but the learning appears the same to me as someone who's convinced they could learn just about any programming language if it was necessary (over time I've seen procedural, OOP, declarative and functional stuff but never programming logic outside of the prolog code I wrote in school).

Go isn't made for your specific task at hand but it's a very easy language to pick up and it has good directory traversal standard library code and good regex (even though with time perl's has been optimized to be faster and I think it's written in C++) but more than anything Go is "cloud native" programming in that an awful lot of new microservice tech stacks are centered around it, docker and kubernetes are written in it, and there's a thriving community whose focus is generally web-first and performance-oriented. This means for your use case there might already be a large cohort of gophers that have asked the stackoverflow questions for you

I personally would push you towards the NYT Profiler for Perl before I would towards Rest, but that's because I know you wouldn't waste any time being able to get to the task at hand and then make it go faster, and I expect all but a few rustaceans would be able to do so with the same speed.

Whatever you pick I wish you the very best of luck!

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Needs advice
on
C#C#F#F#
and
KotlinKotlin

Hi there. I want to expand my coding toolset. So I want to learn a second backend language besides Kotlin. Kotlin is fantastic. I love it in every aspect, and I think I can never return to Java. And also why should I? It is 100% interoperable with java and can co-exist in every project.

So my question here is. Which language do you think will bring me more joy? I think F#; it is more like Kotlin. Then C# (it's more or like 100% java). But, let's say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin? can they live side by side? Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow? I would like to learn .Net.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go?

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Recommends
on
C#C#KotlinKotlin

Exceptional decision to go with Kotlin. For the other story, go full with C#. "is C# the holy cow? Yes it is.". Specially now when netCore is crossplatform and you can build asp.net core applications on Windows, Linux and macOS via Visual Studio Code which is also multiplatform. Nothing will beat C# in the near future. Also, at the end of 2021 Microsoft will release Net 6.0 which will include MAUI.

"For those new to .NET MAUI (standing for .NET Multi-platform App UI), Microsoft says it's "the evolution of Xamarin.Forms extended from mobile to desktop scenarios with UI controls rebuilt from the ground up for performance and extensibility."

So, C# all the way sire!

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Recommends
on
C#C#

animefanx1,

First let's get your questions sorted: Which language do you think will bring me more joy?

This you will have to decide for yourself, I am a long time C# developer and have seen it grow into a very compelling platform. The language and I'd compare it more to Kotlin than Java (by a long margin). More on .NET in a bit.

say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin?

You can have 100% interop with a caveat, your F# libraries have to implement certain guidance in order to be referenced from C#. Some (dare I say most) of the differences between F# and C# are predicated on language constructs that are not available in C#. For instance F# functions that return Unit.

can they live side by side?

Yes.

Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow?

I don't know if I take your meaning, but let me say this: Learning either C# or F# will likely force you to understand concepts such as garbage collection, primitive types, etc. which apply to all .NET languages, thus a lot of the effort you put into .NET is bound to pay off regardless of your choice.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go? You can't go wrong with any of these and I venture to say whether you select C#, F#, Dart or Go as your next adventure, your willingness to learn will take you to try other languages, some which mey not even exist yet!

PS1: .NET is an end to end environment now. With the introduction of Blazor and Razor pages one does not need JavaScript or other browser scripting languages, it even interops with JavaScript. PS2. Microsoft is working on unifying .NET. Soon there will be only one version: .NET 5! Caveat: Some features such as WinForms will still be specific to the windows environment but all of those are likely things you don't need in Mac or Linux

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I think you can learn go instead C#. C# is cool, but Golang also cool. It can run on any OS without specific software. C# can run on linux too but it's only the .NET Core as I know. But golang is flexible. So try it and decide what do you think about Golang

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Pros of F#
Pros of Perl
  • 53
    Pattern-matching
  • 42
    Makes programming fun again
  • 38
    Type providers
  • 32
    Delightful
  • 30
    Frictionless
  • 26
    Static type inference
  • 21
    Composable
  • 19
    Ml syntax
  • 17
    REPL
  • 17
    Succinct
  • 10
    DDD
  • 9
    Making invalid states impossible
  • 7
    Great community
  • 7
    WebSharper
  • 7
    Language support for units of measure
  • 6
    Functional Programming
  • 6
    Powerful
  • 5
    Beautiful Code
  • 5
    Compact
  • 5
    Multiplatform
  • 5
    Functional paradigm
  • 5
    Computation Expressions
  • 5
    Open source
  • 5
    Less bugs
  • 5
    Productive
  • 4
    Allow use JS and .NET libraries
  • 4
    Object oriented features
  • 4
    Fun to write
  • 72
    Lots of libraries
  • 66
    Open source
  • 61
    Text processing
  • 54
    Powerful
  • 49
    Unix-style
  • 47
    Regex
  • 37
    Stable
  • 32
    Concise syntax
  • 29
    Hackerish
  • 22
    Easy to use
  • 16
    Swiss army chainsaw
  • 13
    Code Less Do More
  • 12
    CPAN
  • 9
    Freedom
  • 8
    All purpose
  • 5
    Readability
  • 5
    Familiar
  • 5
    Many ways to do it
  • 5
    Community
  • 4
    Object-Oriented
  • 4
    Modular
  • 4
    Smart (does alot for you)
  • 3
    Postmodern
  • 3
    It's the best one-off task language
  • 2
    For a man
  • 2
    Good man pages
  • 1
    Auto case variables
  • 1
    Single Source Library (CPAN)
  • 1
    Multi-threaded support
  • 1
    Multiparadigm
  • 1
    C-style
  • 1
    Hashes

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Cons of F#
Cons of Perl
  • 3
    Microsoft tend to ignore F# preferring to hype C#
  • 2
    Interop between C# can sometimes be difficult
  • 1
    Hype
  • 1
    Type Providers can be unstable in larger solutions
  • 4
    Messy $/@/% syntax
  • 3
    No exception handling
  • 2
    Bad OO support
  • 2
    "1;"
  • 2
    No OS threads
  • 1
    Variables are global by default
  • 1
    Copy-on-create for interpreter-based threads
  • 1
    Barewords
  • 1
    Errors/warnings are ignored by default

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What is F#?

F# is a mature, open source, cross-platform, functional-first programming language. It empowers users and organizations to tackle complex computing problems with simple, maintainable and robust code.

What is Perl?

Perl is a general-purpose programming language originally developed for text manipulation and now used for a wide range of tasks including system administration, web development, network programming, GUI development, and more.

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What companies use F#?
What companies use Perl?
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What are some alternatives to F# and Perl?
Haskell
It is a general purpose language that can be used in any domain and use case, it is ideally suited for proprietary business logic and data analysis, fast prototyping and enhancing existing software environments with correct code, performance and scalability.
OCaml
It is an industrial strength programming language supporting functional, imperative and object-oriented styles. It is the technology of choice in companies where a single mistake can cost millions and speed matters,
Scala
Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
Clojure
Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.
See all alternatives