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I know you can use C# and F# together in the same project however i'm not sure if its a good idea to do so.

It seems to me that mixing two very different coding styles (functional vs OO) could cause a lack of cohesion in the design. Is that correct?

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How can you use them in the same project? Do you mean the same solution? – insta Feb 23 '12 at 15:53
Not the Microsoft Definition of project but the more general definition – Tom Squires Feb 23 '12 at 16:05

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There's nothing wrong with mixing languages in a product as long as you use each appropriately and they "play nice" together.

If there is part of your project that would be best coded using a functional language then it makes sense to code it in F#. Similarly for C#.

What would be pointless (at best) would be mixing languages for the sake of it.

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Yes I agree with ChrisF. Also C# currently already incorporates F# principles, such as anonymous types: 

  var unitanon = new[]
            {
                new { Field1="new car", Field2 = 1},
                new { Field1="old car", Field2 = 20} 
            };

That said, I personally think it's a step backward in code readability, though it is very convenient.

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Anonymous types are not really an F# principle. May be you mean to refer to type inference (what the var keyword does in C#) whereby the compiler guesses what type you are referring to. This is used throughout F#. – Mongus Pong Nov 8 '11 at 11:14
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I would use F# for the easy async capabilities. However, the TPL has made it quite easy to do that in C# by itself. If you were to embed a language for scripting though, I would definitely use F# for the parsing of that. – Jetti Dec 7 '11 at 17:33
up vote 1 down vote

It seems to me that mixing two very different coding styles (functional vs OO) could cause a lack of cohesion in the design. Is that correct?

I don't think you'll get a "lack of cohesion". Each language has strengths and weaknesses. Combining them on a common-language run-time lets you get closer to the best of both worlds. With C# and F#, you just want to make sure you use the intersection of the two languages at the interface between the two in your solution.

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