Triage F# current in dotnet interactive

[houstonhaynes]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The last time an issue was closed from Agent-F# here was May 2023 (as of this writing).

FsAutoComplete in dotnet interactive is pretty far behind the current version.

Describe the solution you'd like
Triage the Area-F# open list to update the current state of affairs WRT F# support and how to make it part of the active roadmap again.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Building a separate kernel for F# to run in a notebook environment.

I'm the current maintainer of a forked DiffSharp library called Furnace and while bringing it current I've noted the F# experience with dotnet-interactive is a dramatically sub-par experience when compared to simply using .fsx in VSCode.

Personal sidebar

I imagine that the reason why the F# area of dotnet is so quiet here is the lack of support that it's received from those charged with managing dotnet interactive's development. By consequence, it has led to a natural outgrowth of other work in the F# ecosystem that the community has embraced, separate from whatever dotnet interactive deems as worthy of engineering effort. This has led to a negative cycle that should be honestly assessed and decisions taken one way or other.

If Microsoft simply shrugs and leaves things as they are - and the last F# issue ever addressed here is in May of 2023 - I recommend you remove F# support from dotnet interactive. This isn't about new features going un-addressed - this is simply about at par functionality that should have been dealt with already. Don't leave a half-working solution out there to poison opinion of a language that's clearly better suited to this area than C#.

That said, if there is genuine interest from a trillion-dollar company to actually support the one language in their ecosystem that's particularly well-suited to machine learning and data science, that would very likely receive some support from the community. Support from Microsoft would mean effort that is compensatory for the years of neglect that F# has gotten here. Simply opening the door for a trillion-dollar company to take advantage of free labor is not sufficient.