Where did F# go?

Question

I just noticed F# is upgraded in VS 2012 but still not sure who is using F#. Anybody out there?

Vulpes · Answer

I don't use it personally and my impression is that not many other .NET developers do either. I think it's mainly of interest to mathematicians and scientists who are already familiar with functional languages such as Haskell and OCaml. For any one else with a background in the C or Basic family of languages F# is just too strange and some of the more intelligible features of functional languages have already been added to C# and VB.Net in any case. To be fair Microsoft haven't helped by failing to produce an Express version of F# which might have helped to popularize it. I guess there are just too many other fishes to fry right now. Although I've never been convinced of the accuracy of the Tiobe index I see that they currently have it somewhere between 50 and 100 in the popularity league : http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html