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I’ve learned programming with OOP in Turbo Pascal, C++ and Java. Switching to a different programming style, more data-oriented, using free-floating functions, in languages such as Python, Go, or more recently Zig, has been liberating. I have inherited a C# code base and I have to say that I’m not super excited about going back to using classes and objects everywhere. It’s really hard for me now to “unsee” the problem with that unnecessary complexity.


Quite relatable. Writing a lot of Go and a bit of Rust has changed how I write Python and TypeScript. Most newcomers in startups write Python in a data-oriented manner, but that’s not the case even in new Java or C# codebases I’ve seen.

One reason I dislike Kotlin is that, despite being fairly new, Java has infected it with OO, and most Kotlin code looks exactly like Java. The whole point of Kotlin was to escape Java’s OO baggage and appeal to a new generation of coders, but it flopped hard. I guess old habits die hard, and way more Kotlin is written by Java veterans than by the younger devs it was supposed to attract.


I'm wondering if the solution to my problem could be to start using F#, which seems to encourage a data-oriented style over an object-oriented style, while staying in the same C# and .Net ecosystem. F# has a concept of modules, holding all executable code and data. They elegantly replace C# static classes, and are mapped to static classes in the CLR.


Modules come from ML linage.

https://smlhelp.github.io/book/docs/concepts/modules/

However they aren't as powerful, because ML modules are the way to do OOP like stuff, via what is called functors.

F# as .NET language naturally has other mechanisms for this, hence why it is a basic module concept, more in the linage of Modula-2 modules.


What is happened is that a guest language cannot avoid the platform ways of working.

Scala, Clojure do support OOP just as well.

Glad to know you don't make use of methods, polymorphism and dynamic dispatch in Go, Python and Typescript.


For data-oriented style you can use records, tuples and structs.

You can import all methods from a static class to use them as free-floating functions.

C# started as OO so older codebases are OOP heavy.


I still like C# more than Java and know that the language now allows you to break out of GoF-style OO. But the issue is, few people actually do, and those who want to aren’t writing C#.




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