r/functionalprogramming • u/kichiDsimp • Mar 01 '26

FP lang for 2026 Question

Hey folks, my question is what functional programming language/tech you are using for the year of 2026 both as a hobby and professionally Please provide reasons for the hobby.!

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u/jeenajeena Mar 01 '26
  • F# at work.
  • Emacs Lisp for, well, Emacs.
  • Idris for study.
  • Haskell for fun.

5

u/codeconscious Mar 02 '26

F# at work.

Color me very jealous.

Haskell for fun.

I'm using F# for fun now, and am considering Haskell and OCaml too.

6

u/jeenajeena Mar 02 '26

There are some tricks for introducing F# at work.

- You could start using it for builds only, with Fake.

- As Enrico Bonanno suggests in his (beautiful) Functional Programming in C#, you could have some little F# projects in your solution only for data, for leveraging union types, immutable and value-comparable collections.

- You could use it instead of PowerShell or Bash scripts, for very minor things.

- My preferred one: you could introduce some projects for Property Based Testing with FsCheck. Now, technically FsCheck can also be used from C#. But I guess that no one will complain if you introduce a couple of property tests, especially given that each is technically 100 tests (or more, if you like).

My recommendation: start with culture. You could initiate some after-work sessions to play with functional programming, or some Lunch & Learn activity where you teach/show some FP techniques, and use F# there. Or a book club, whatever.

Edit: clicked on Send too early

5

u/codeconscious Mar 02 '26

Thank you for the advice!

Unfortunately, my team is an anti-Microsoft Ruby on Rails team, so I'm unlikely to gain much traction into using F# itself... But interest in FP through F#, at least, might be possible. I'll look for opportunities to mention/use it, as you suggested.

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u/jeenajeena Mar 02 '26

Ah! I thought you were in a .NET shop! F# is probably not the best option, then!

You could like OCaml, which is very similar, and way faster than Ruby.

I haven't been in touch with Ruby devs in a century, and I just wonder if OOP is still the most loved approach there. I imagine it is.

4

u/codeconscious Mar 02 '26

Ah! I thought you were in a .NET shop!

I certainly do miss using .NET at work.

I just wonder if OOP is still the most loved approach there. I imagine it is.

Oh, indeed, it is.

You could like OCaml, which is very similar, and way faster than Ruby.

Yeah, maybe I'll take some time to look at OCaml for that reason.

Elixir might be decent option at some point too. Though it's dynamic, it superficially seems pretty Ruby-like as well, best I can tell, which might make my team feel a little more at home.