

Ask HN: Which functional language should a beginner learn? - Apocryphon

I was tempted to just go with Scheme, but I'm also kind of balancing pragmatic concerns with it. I feel that there's more use for Functional Python or Haskell perhaps these days.<p>So, any suggestions?
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gaius
The _pragmatic_ choices are F# and Scala, in the sense that these are top-
quality languages that it is, right now, possible to get a paid job doing.
Both are extremely "viable" because they can interoperate seamlessly with .NET
and Java respectively. Another is Erlang.

You certainly can do "real work" in OCaml or Haskell, but (and I say this as
an OCaml user) it will be an uphill struggle. As I sit here right now, at my
Mac, I am working in C on Oracle bindings for OCaml, because I need them
myself! OCaml is a great language and a great community, but F# is ready for
prime-time and we're not quite yet.

