When comparing Parenscript vs F# (via FunScript), the Slant community recommends Parenscript for most people. In the question“What are the best languages that compile to JavaScript? ” Parenscript is ranked 35th while F# (via FunScript) is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose Parenscript is:
Lisps are easy languages to learn (once you get past the parens) and Common Lisp is a very practical dialect.
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Pros
Pro It is Common Lisp
Lisps are easy languages to learn (once you get past the parens) and Common Lisp is a very practical dialect.
Pro Run almost identically on both the browser and server
Parenscript code can run almost identically on both the browser (as JavaScript) and server (as Common Lisp).
Pro Easier transition from other paradigms
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.
Pro Concise syntax
F#'s syntax tends to be terse while remaining very readable and easy to understand without being a chore to write.
Pro Runs on the CLR
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.
Cons
Con The syntax may be hard to learn
Being an implementation of Lisp, Parenscript's syntax may seem cryptic and hard to understand for people not used to it. While Lisp has very little syntax compared to other languages and it's generally considered pretty terse, there's still an initial overhead in learning the language.
Con Not really cross platform
Though the community sites are touting F# can be cross platform through use of Mono, the reality is that it is more of a hack to replay on larger mono applications in production.