Yeah. I'm having so much fun with F# that I absolutely did not anticipate. Sure, it's something everyone using .NET knows about but I genuinely underestimated it and wish more people gave it a try. Such a good language.

As for the hate - my pet theory is that developers need something like a sacrificial lamb to blame their misfortunes on, and a banner to rally under which often happens to be "against that other group" or "against that competing language", and because .NET is platform that happens to be made by microsoft and is a host for two very powerful multi-paradigm languages causes it to be a point of contention for many. From what I've seen, other languages do not receive so much undeserved hate and here on HN some like Go, Ruby or BEAM family receive copious amount of unjustified praise not rooted in technical merits.