Question

I was wondering if it is possible to use the WebSharper compiler to write Node.js applications in F#. Are there any resources available that could show me how to do this? Are there any good reasons not to try to do this?

Answer 1

[I would post this as a comment, but it got a bit too long…]

Here is another good reason not to do it – F# agents and asynchronous workflows provide a concurrent programming model that is in many aspects much better than what Node.js provides. For example:

• it gives you both concurrency and also true parallelism so you can write code that does not block the system when it needs to do some work using the CPU
• asynchronous workflows provide easy way to handle exceptions and handle resources
  (you can use try .. with in asynchronous (or event-based) code)
• the agent-based programming model gives you a great way to store state

If you can use F# to write your server-side application, then you can as well us the powerful abstractions it providers. See Server-Side Functional Programming for a brief introduction. I also did a talk F# on the server-side which has been recorded and discusses the same topic.

This is not necessarily a reason why not to try this. Trying this might be fun and if you like F# language, but want to use in Node.js environment, then it would be very useful to have this.