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Comment by munchler

12 days ago

Doesn't the "O" in OCaml stand for "Object", though? I think you could pick up either F# or OCaml just as easily.

The nuances of OOP in F# can be ignored by beginners, so I really wouldn’t let yourself be intimidated coming from Clojure.

[0] https://ocaml.org/docs/objects

7 comments

munchler

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armchairhacker  12 days ago

OCaml classes and objects are (ironically) rarely used and generally discouraged. There are some cases where they’re practically required, such as GUI and FFI (js_of_ocaml). But otherwise, most code does encapsulation and abstraction using modules and functor modules (which are more like Haskell and Rust typeclasses than traditional OOP classes).

I don’t know much about F#, but last time I used it most of its standard library was in C# and .NET, so F# code would interact with objects and classes a lot. AFAIK F# also doesn’t have functor modules, so even without the dependence on C# code, you still can’t avoid classes and objects like you can with OCaml (e.g. you can’t write a generic collection module like `List` or `Set` without functors, it would have to be a collection of a specific type or a class).

  • neonsunset  12 days ago

    F# uses .NET's generics, so the statement regarding List/Set is completely incorrect (all base collections are generic).

    • penteract  12 days ago

      I think you misread their claim - they said that generic list/set would have to be classes, not modules (generic modules are a specific thing in OCaml and aren't the same as a module of generic classes).