Julia vs F#

Julia runs almost as fast as (and in fact in some cases faster than) C code.

Dynamic and high level, but does not isolate the user from properly thinking about types. Can do explicit type signatures which is great for teaching structured thinking.

Out of the box Julia has a very good Read-Eval-Print-Loop, which both completes functions and types, as well as completion based on history of previous statements. It integrates well with the shell and has an excellent online help system.

Julia code is easy to read and avoid a lot of unnecessary special symbols and fluff. It uses newline to end statements and "end" to end blocks so there is no need for lots of semicolons and curly braces. It is regular in that unless it is a variable assignment, function name always comes first. No need to be confused about whether something is a method on an object or a free function.

Unlike Python and Ruby, since you can annotate the types a function operates on, you can overload function names, so that you can use the same function name for many data types. So you can keep simple descriptive function names and not have to invent artificial function names to separate them from the type they operate on.

The Julia language is written in itself to a much larger extent than most other languages, so a budding programmer can read through the depths of the standard library and learn exactly how things work all the way down to the low-level bit-twiddling details, which can be englightening.

Julia has built in n-dimensional arrays similar in functionality as Python's numpy.

You can have multiple functions with the same name, but doing different things depending on function arguments and argument types.

Julia requires no boilerplate code – a beginner needs to write only the parts they care about. This combined with the REPL provides the best learning experience available.

Julia provides a high level of abstraction, making platform-independent programming trivial and easing the learning curve.

You can perform operations on scalars, for example 2^2 or [1, 2, 3].^2.

Julia allows you to edit Julia code in the language itself and write powerful macros. It is a great introduction to metaprogramming features

The Julia REPL allows quickly testing how some code behaves and gives access to documentation and package management immediately in the REPL.

F#'s syntax tends to be terse while remaining very readable and easy to understand without being a chore to write.

Since F# is not a purely functional language, it lends itself to being more easily picked up by programmers that have experience with other paradigms.

Since F# runs on the Common Language Runtime or CLR, it has access to the entire .NET Framework, as well as libraries written in other .NET languages such as C#, VB.NET, and C++/CLI.

Forget Xamarin and Mono. F# now runs on the multiplatform .Net Core!

Thanks to a project like Fable, you can write and run your client app in F# and run it over JavaScript. It allows you to share code between your server and client.

This is a .Net language natively supported by Visual Studio. Though it is not as tooled up as C# the support is still substantial. In particular, C# deployment scenarios can be enabled for it with small C# wrapper projects. Integration with Visual Studio provides: IntelliSense, debugging, projects an other features.

F# directs you into a workflow where the right way is the path of least resistance.

Coming from a C# background, its restrictions might feel arbitrary at first (e.g., what do you mean my code has to be in dependency order!? Arbitrary alphabetical or bust!), but you'll soon realize that your code is cohesive, concise and consistent in a way that it never was before - and you can compile and run with confidence!

Thanks to Xamarin, F# is a functional language that you can use to build for iOS, Android and Windows.