What are the pro’s and con’s of each. How do the communities compare.

I agree that this kind of question is easier to answer if one specifies particular constraints that one is interested in. However, these are not just two members of the ML-family, as would be the case if we were comparing OCaml and SML. As I understand it, F# began as a revision of OCaml for .Net,…

Currently I installed Windows-dotnet & mono on Gentoo-linux. Dotnet runs really fine on Linux i.e. it’s really cross-platform. As editor i use vscode with Ionide plugin. When i code in ocaml i use as editor neovim with “merlin” plugin. Both show “function-hints” and “errors” as you type, so they…

One specific point about some tradeoffs that I see. I like the idea that F# has .Net libraries available. But I don’t want to learn .Net. I also use Clojure a lot, and once you get beyond a certain point with Clojure, it’s very helpful to know a little Java. But I already knew some Java when I s…

OCaml is a significantly bigger language in terms of programming languages core features / programming language research derived features, and also compilation targets. (Functors, recursive modules, first class modules, structural object-orientation, polymorphic variants, polymorphic recursion, labe…

F# started as basically a port of OCaml for dotnet, with some stuff removed or changed to fit the CLR better. But it grew its own features that make it interesting as a language of its own, some of which include: support for static operator overloading (limited but done reasonably well; relies on …

I’ll give some pros and cons of F#, you can deduce that OCaml has almost the exact inverse of these pros and cons. + Access to .NET ecosystem - Have to learn C# pretty deeply to understand how to use most .NET libraries/frameworks from F# + Language created and supported by Microsoft - Toolchain…

Random things not mentioned above: F# has units of measure ( @gasche mentioned it, but adding a link) F# does not have named arguments (in normal functions), which I am reminded of constantly when I use it The type inferencing in F# isn’t quite as good, but can’t put my finger on why. I have to ann…

F# does runtime monomorphisation whereas OCaml uses an uniform representation through pointer-tagging on a single machine word. Thus in F# you can easily observe the JIT causing pause time in the execution. E.g. if you implement Okasaki’s random access lists: type ral<'a> = | Nil | Zero of ral<'…

Still no good comparison between the two is lacking. [Whereas comparison to rust or scala is available ]

How does ocaml compare to F# in the family of ml languages

Learning

cjr March 14, 2023, 10:55pm 13

You might find Paul Biggar’s discussion of moving from OCaml to F# useful. Paul Biggar on Darklang

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How does ocaml compare to F# in the family of ml languages

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