Can I start web development with a functional language?

Question

I'd like to start doing some forms of web development, with the aim of building web apps that could eventually grow into start-up products. And for a long time, I have been very curious about functional programming, and somewhere in my heart secretly believing that higher up you go in the abstraction level, the more power you have (hidden presumption: functional programming is more abstract than procedural).

So given the little web develop experience I have, is there any functional language/framework good to start with, for learning web development?

Alternative is to stick with a matured procedural web framework (probably Django), learn the ropes of web developments first, then think about functional programming. However, all the work would be "wasted" if I do eventually switch to functional programming.

I have pretty good experience with C++, Objective-C/Cocoa, familiar with Python.

EDIT: Many people suggest F#. But I would love to (with no offense to others), stay away from .NET platform and other MS ecosystems.

Answer 1

You might be interested in Ocsigen, a Web framework for OCaml. OCaml is a pretty good language to learn functional programming IMO. It's really strongly functional, unlike Ruby or Python or any other imperative OO language people will try to sell you as "able to do functional programming" (by which they just mean it has first-class functions).

(Disclaimer: I haven't used Ocsigen much myself, but I have heard good things about it. It's on my list of things to do.)

Answer 2

You could learn F# as your functional language and ASP.NET MVC as your web framework. This gives you access to the tools and libraries in the .NET framework.

I took my first steps in web development with ASP.NET MVC and I found it quite simple to start with.

And you could also have a look at the F# Web Tools, as itowlson suggested.