This book marks a transition point in the history of the F# language. From its origins as a research project at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, and its long heritage from languages such as OCaml and Haskell, F# has now emerged as a stable, efficient, and enjoyable productivity tool for compositional and succinct programming on the .NET platform. With the release of Visual Studio 2010, a whole new generation of programmers will have the language available to them as they build the future through the software they design, whether it be through beautiful code, groundbreaking software frameworks, high-performance websites, new software methodologies, better numer-ical algorithms, great testing, intelligent parallelization, better modelling, or any number of the other manifestations of “good programming” with F#. As the designer of F#, I am thrilled to see Chris Smith, a major contributor on the F# team, present F#
in a way that is accessible to a wide audience.
F# combines the simplicity and elegance of typed functional programming with the
strengths of the .NET platform. Although typed functional programming is relatively
new to many programmers and thus requires some learning, it makes programming
simpler in many ways. F# programs tend to be built from compositional, correct foun-
dational elements, and type inference makes programs shorter and clearer. In this book,
Chris first introduces the foundational paradigms of F#: functional programming, im-
perative programming, and object-oriented programming, and emphasizes how these
can be used together. His focus is on simple, clear explanations of the foundational
elements of the language, with an eye on the enjoyment that comes from programming
in general, and programming with F# in particular.
When used at its best, F# makes things simple. For example, F# units of measure are
covered in this book and are a landmark feature in the history of programming lan-
guages, taming much of the complexity of working with floating-point numbers in
common application areas. Furthermore, the huge, generation-defining shift toward
asynchronous and parallel processing forms part of the background to the development
of F#. In this book, Chris tackles the foundations F# and .NET provide to help you
work in this world. Likewise, F# has great strengths in language-oriented program-
ming, a topic dear to Chris’s heart, and again well covered here.
About The Author :-
Chris Smith
Chris Smith works at Microsoft on the F# team. His role as a software design engineer in test gives him a unique mastery of the F# language. Chris has a masters degree in computer science from the University of Washington.
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