6 ms·

There was a large group of folks that left Ruby on Rails for Elixir (even has a similar looking syntax), yet it wasn't on your list of languages to consider. Ju

There was a large group of folks that left Ruby on Rails for Elixir (even has a similar looking syntax), yet it wasn't on your list of languages to consider. Just curious, was there a particular reason?

raphinou 1y ago
I should have mentioned in the message, but I was looking for a strongly typed language. I was an avid-user of dynamically-typed languages, but that particular Ruby on Rails app became unmaintainable, and part of the culprit was due to the dynamic typing. I hoped that using a statically typed language would make it easier to maintain a complex app in the long term. And I must say that it totally materialised, to the point that I don't want to develop in dynamically typed languages anymore. Here's an example: as I said in my original message, I was a complete stranger to the dotnet ecosystem, and I learned the F# language at the same time. And I decided to develop the app as a library project to be used by the web app. I completely missed the prevalence of the async approach in the dotnet, and all my code was synchronous. One day, about half-way in the project, I realised I needed to switch to async code. Had this happened in a dynamically typed project, it would have been hell for me. Maybe it's me that can't grasp a project well enough, but I need the type-guardrails to find my way in large refactorings. And with the strong types, large refactorings can be done confidently. They don't replace tests, but make the refactoring process much more smooth. The app is open source and its code is at: https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb It doesn't have a lot of users, not the least due to lack of marketing and polishing the user experience. But I am satisfied of what I learned developing it!
- tasuki 1y ago
  These days there's Gleam[0], as a strongly typed alternative for the BEAM virtual machine. Of all the languages I haven't used yet, it seems to hit the safe + minimalistic + productive sweet spot the best. (Yes the C-inspired syntax is slightly off-putting, but syntax is the least important aspect of a language.) [0]: https://gleam.run/ https://gleam.run/
  - raphinou 1y ago
    I am also keeping an eye on gleam! I also regret that they left the ml syntax behind, but as you say it shouldn't be a blocking factor. If they adopt computation expressions and make otp a priority it would probably come beside fsharp in my toolbox!
  - neonsunset 1y ago
    Gleam, much like any language which primarily targets BEAM, is slower by an order of magnitude or two when compared to F#.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      The appeal is the runtime model. I can’t readily verify if BEAM languages are meaningfully slower or really slower at all but let’s take the premise for the sake of argument. Even if is slower, the runtime model is incredibly resilient and it’s cheap to scale up and down, easy to hot update, and generally does asynchronous work extremely well across a lot of different processes. F# has really good async ergonomics but it doesn’t have the same task/processing flexibility and Websockets are kind of a pain compared to elixir or even erlang
      - CharlieDigital 1y ago
        .NET's SignalR is actually quite good. Strongly typed message hubs on the server[0]. Wide client support. Azure SignalR[1] if you don't want to own the infrastructure to scale web sockets. [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hubs?view=aspnetcore-9.0#strongly-typed-hubs https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hubs?v... [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/signalr-service https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/signalr-service
        no_wizard 1y ago
        given this is about F#, the question is how ergonomic is it to use this in F#? In the past, I found it wonky
- DonaldPShimoda 1y ago
  This is a really minor point, but "strongly typed" and "statically typed" are not interchangeable terms. In the context of your comments here, you are exclusively interested in the static nature of the type system, rather than anything about the "strength" of it (which is something totally different and inconsistently defined).
  - raphinou 1y ago
    You are absolutely right. Thanks for pointing it out.
    - DonaldPShimoda 1y ago
      Sure thing. Cheers!
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    Can you explain more about strongly typed vs statically typed?
    - baq 1y ago
      strong typing: 2 + "2" is an error (e.g. Python vs JS) static typing: 2 + "2" does not compile/parse (e.g. Python vs mypy, Typescript vs JS) this is a very simplistic example, but should get you to feel the difference.
      - hoseja 1y ago
        weak typing: 2 + "2" is 22
        RUnconcerned 1y ago
        could also be "4" or 4! 4 seems like it would be the most evil option, honestly
        1y ago
- asadbeksindar 1y ago
  Hey, thank you for sharing your app's source code. I'll definitely check it out, I was really looking for such apps on F# open source projects!

raphinou 1y ago

I should have mentioned in the message, but I was looking for a strongly typed language. I was an avid-user of dynamically-typed languages, but that particular Ruby on Rails app became unmaintainable, and part of the culprit was due to the dynamic typing. I hoped that using a statically typed language would make it easier to maintain a complex app in the long term. And I must say that it totally materialised, to the point that I don't want to develop in dynamically typed languages anymore. Here's an example: as I said in my original message, I was a complete stranger to the dotnet ecosystem, and I learned the F# language at the same time. And I decided to develop the app as a library project to be used by the web app. I completely missed the prevalence of the async approach in the dotnet, and all my code was synchronous. One day, about half-way in the project, I realised I needed to switch to async code. Had this happened in a dynamically typed project, it would have been hell for me. Maybe it's me that can't grasp a project well enough, but I need the type-guardrails to find my way in large refactorings. And with the strong types, large refactorings can be done confidently. They don't replace tests, but make the refactoring process much more smooth. The app is open source and its code is at: https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb https://gitlab.com/myowndb/myowndb It doesn't have a lot of users, not the least due to lack of marketing and polishing the user experience. But I am satisfied of what I learned developing it!

tasuki 1y ago
These days there's Gleam[0], as a strongly typed alternative for the BEAM virtual machine. Of all the languages I haven't used yet, it seems to hit the safe + minimalistic + productive sweet spot the best. (Yes the C-inspired syntax is slightly off-putting, but syntax is the least important aspect of a language.) [0]: https://gleam.run/ https://gleam.run/
- raphinou 1y ago
  I am also keeping an eye on gleam! I also regret that they left the ml syntax behind, but as you say it shouldn't be a blocking factor. If they adopt computation expressions and make otp a priority it would probably come beside fsharp in my toolbox!
- neonsunset 1y ago
  Gleam, much like any language which primarily targets BEAM, is slower by an order of magnitude or two when compared to F#.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    The appeal is the runtime model. I can’t readily verify if BEAM languages are meaningfully slower or really slower at all but let’s take the premise for the sake of argument. Even if is slower, the runtime model is incredibly resilient and it’s cheap to scale up and down, easy to hot update, and generally does asynchronous work extremely well across a lot of different processes. F# has really good async ergonomics but it doesn’t have the same task/processing flexibility and Websockets are kind of a pain compared to elixir or even erlang
    - CharlieDigital 1y ago
      .NET's SignalR is actually quite good. Strongly typed message hubs on the server[0]. Wide client support. Azure SignalR[1] if you don't want to own the infrastructure to scale web sockets. [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hubs?view=aspnetcore-9.0#strongly-typed-hubs https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/signalr/hubs?v... [1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/signalr-service https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/signalr-service
      - no_wizard 1y ago
        given this is about F#, the question is how ergonomic is it to use this in F#? In the past, I found it wonky
DonaldPShimoda 1y ago
This is a really minor point, but "strongly typed" and "statically typed" are not interchangeable terms. In the context of your comments here, you are exclusively interested in the static nature of the type system, rather than anything about the "strength" of it (which is something totally different and inconsistently defined).
- raphinou 1y ago
  You are absolutely right. Thanks for pointing it out.
  - DonaldPShimoda 1y ago
    Sure thing. Cheers!
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  Can you explain more about strongly typed vs statically typed?
  - baq 1y ago
    strong typing: 2 + "2" is an error (e.g. Python vs JS) static typing: 2 + "2" does not compile/parse (e.g. Python vs mypy, Typescript vs JS) this is a very simplistic example, but should get you to feel the difference.
    - hoseja 1y ago
      weak typing: 2 + "2" is 22
      - RUnconcerned 1y ago
        could also be "4" or 4! 4 seems like it would be the most evil option, honestly
        1y ago
asadbeksindar 1y ago
Hey, thank you for sharing your app's source code. I'll definitely check it out, I was really looking for such apps on F# open source projects!