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I just listened to podcast of Chris Smith talking about F# in which he talks about how F# is a language which allows you to approach problems in a different way than in C#/VB.NET, i.e. instead of "pushing bits around" you "chain together data transformations", and that how F# will "become like XML", something that you use in addition to your language of choice (C# or VB.NET) in order to solve certain problems in a more efficient way.
This got me to thinking about the relationship of the .NET languages, here's how I understand them:
But what about IronPython and IronRuby? Chris mentioned that "F# learned a lot from Ruby and Python" so I would think that F# has a similar relationship to IronRuby/IronPython and C# has to VB.NET. However, a little googling around tells me that IronRuby and IronPython are both built on the DLR but F# is not.
How are the relationships between F#, IronRuby and IronPython to be best understood?
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F# and IronPython/IronRuby are light years apart from a language perspective. F# is a functional, highly typed compiled language. IronRuby/IronPython are dynamically typed, interpreted languages.
I believe IronPython does additionally support compilation but I'm not 100% sure, and less about ruby.
The relationship between VB.Net and C# is much closer.
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In many ways F# and Ruby/Python are superficially similar. All three languages allow you to concisely express ideas without littering your code with many types. However, F# is actually very different from Ruby and Python, since F# is a statically typed language, while Ruby and Python are dynamically typed. Idiomatic F# code rarely mentions types, but the compiler infers types and any type errors will be flagged by the compiler during compilation. For Ruby and Python, using a value at the wrong type will only generate errors at run-time. Ruby and Python’s dynamism means that both are more amenable to metaprogramming than F# is (types can be modified at runtime, for instance). On the other hand, F# is going to be more performant for most tasks (comparable to C#), and offers many nice functional abstractions such as discriminated unions with pattern matching. It’s certainly true that learning any of these languages well will lead you to think about problems differently than you do in C# or VB.NET, but your approach will probably vary a lot between F# and Python/Ruby as well.
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I'd say F# learned a whole lot more from OCaml than it did from Ruby and Python combined. The only real comparison is that F# is brings ML to .NET in the same way that IronPython/Ruby bring Python/Ruby to .NET.
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