{"id":390,"date":"2023-06-28T12:04:28","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T11:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informedica.nl\/?p=390"},"modified":"2023-06-28T12:06:18","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T11:06:18","slug":"f-compilation-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informedica.nl\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"F# Compilation Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just recently, I was watching the fsharpConf2023<\/a>. There was a very interesting talk from the CEO of Darklang<\/a>, Paul Biggar. Darklang was originally created using OCaml. Later on they decided to switch to F# and the talk is about their experience with F#. Paul Biggar specifically discussed the goods and the bads of F# as a language to use in production. One of the comments that stood out to me was the compilation speed of F#.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
Darklang comparison of OCaml with F#<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The dislike of the compilation speed got my attention as I never experienced problems with compilation speed. And why was that? It could be I only have been working on small projects. But the project I am currently working on has a compilation time of 16 secs, and that is not really fast. Why then is it that I never experienced this as a real problem? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I obviously do not run a lot of compilation on my code while developing. What I typically do is that I just take all the code I need for development and either reference or load them to a script file and use that as a starting point to enhance\/change or add to my code. I even will copy over all the code for a specific project, paste that in a single script file and start working on that. To me that is an incredible powerful way of working with F#, as it feels that I can directly communicate with my code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also often see youtube videos on F# that show you code in a regular “fs” code file that has to be run through compilation. I think that is not the best way of teaching or even using F#. You can do essentially all your coding in a F# script file and then later on move the working code to individual code files in your project. The one exception that I know of is the code you write for a fable project, but then again, there is no compilation, but a translation to javascript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an example is a rather large script file dealing with trees:<\/p>\n\n\n\n