
On how Jet.com chose F# - latkin
http://techgroup.jet.com/blog/2015/03-22-on-how-jet-chose/
======
untog
The post seems to be a discussion of C# vs F# without considering any other
alternatives. It also mentions being surprised at user groups for Scala and
Clojure being larger - I'm surprised that it would be surprising. It seems
like the verdict was to go to with F# because it's functional - a good reason,
but I'd love to have read why not Scala/Clojure/etc.

Odd thing is that at no point does it mention the cost of running ASP.NET
servers - are they using F# with Mono? If not, the cost of licensing etc. is a
valid concern - though I know MS provides incentives for startups.

 _Less competition over top developers can only mean good things for Jet._

Ehhh... yes and no? If your overall pool of potential developers is much
smaller that's definitely a potential issue.

~~~
jackfoxy
For an operation the size of Jet the licensing of Windows servers is trivial.
Without looking very hard I found a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard
- 64-bit License for $574.94. That's a one-time cost. There are ways to get it
even cheaper. Maybe expensive for a hobbyist, but not much of a consideration
for a company in production.

Companies with a lot of MS licenses have different options available, but this
gives you an idea of the scale of the cost.

~~~
skuhn
Software that is licensed per-server has a higher burden than just the
license's purchase price: you have to actually keep track of those licenses so
that you can plan and optimize license capacity (even if you have a site
license) along with real things like server and network capacity. To me, as
someone who works exclusively in open source environments, that is a heavy
burden and I don't buy software that is licensed per-machine.

To get an idea of the difference in overhead costs I think it's helpful to
look at Amazon's pricing between un-licensed Linux and licensed Windows
instances. An m3.2xlarge instance with Linux is $0.532/hr whereas the same
instance with Windows is $1.036/hr. That is a pretty big difference.

I'm not certain, but I'm guessing the difference boils down to two costs for
Amazon:

    
    
      1. The cost from Microsoft of a license of Windows
      2. The cost of dealing with licensing Windows
      3. The cost of support from Microsoft
    

52% cost overhead does seem a bit high, and I bet you could do better than
that yourself, but I also don't think it is trivial. Just looking around to
figure out the cost of licensing things for this comment was draining.

~~~
sokoloff
The cost spread also no doubt has some "because we can" spread built in as
well. (Which is entirely proper, IMO. Their customers are getting benefit from
the freedom to elect Windows and are paying for the benefit.)

------
morgante
A more accurate title would be "Why Jet didn't choose C#" as they don't seem
to pay _any_ attention to the non-Windows stacks available.

I'm still no closer to understanding why they would build a startup on a MS
stack, a question I've been pondering for the past year and a half.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
Because it started with the CEO making a WCF service. Meaning he knew .NET and
stuck with what was comfortable - just like StackOverflow's origin.

Best to keep to what you know when you are starting something risky - and
there is nothing wrong with the MS stack for this sort of thing.

~~~
vanessa98
Did you mean "a WTF service"?

~~~
umanwizard
Not sure if you're just joking or don't know what WCF is, but in case the
latter is true:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms731082(v=vs.110)....](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms731082\(v=vs.110\).aspx)

~~~
vanessa98
Can it be both?

------
amelius
> Jet is the shopping cart membership that gets you club price savings on just
> about anything you buy.

Pricing should be completely transparent for a competitive market. We need
less of this.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Waiting for someone to make something like Tracktor for Jet. It shows you
pricing data for Amazon products using an extension.

[https://thetracktor.com/](https://thetracktor.com/)

~~~
chrisacree
From what I've seen, it wouldn't work, because they adjust your pricing based
on the other items you've recently bought. More items/$ gets bigger discounts.
Never used it though, so not 100% on how it's calculated.

------
hkon
F# is what the cool former C# developers are using nowdays. It's either that
or node.js embrace. Go figure.

~~~
CmonDev
Where are all the wonderful .NET github repos written entirely in F#? They
sure do like _writing about_ F#.

~~~
JamesBarney
compiler :
[https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp](https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp) build
automation : [http://fsharp.github.io/FAKE/](http://fsharp.github.io/FAKE/)
deedle :
[http://bluemountaincapital.github.io/Deedle/](http://bluemountaincapital.github.io/Deedle/)

And there are plenty of other very cool open source projects written in F#.

Most of them can be found here
[http://fsharp.org/community/projects/](http://fsharp.org/community/projects/)

~~~
jskonhovd
FAKE is awesome. The entire F# ecosystem is pretty impressive.

------
starrychloe
How does F# compare with Ruby? Ruby code is so compact!

~~~
CmonDev
As compact. Most of type errors will shift to compile time, instead of blowing
during runtime. Profit.

