A Comprehensive Guide for Writing Simple Code to Solve Complex Problems
Why learn F#? This multi-paradigm language not only offers you an enormous productivity boost through functional programming, it also lets you develop applications using your existing object-oriented and imperative programming skills. With Programming F# (O’Reilly Media, $44.99 USD), you’ll quickly discover the many advantages of Microsoft’s new language, which includes access to all the great tools and libraries of the .NET platform.
Learn how to reap the benefits of functional programming for your next project–whether it’s quantitative computing, large-scale data exploration, or even a pursuit of your own. With this comprehensive guide, F# team member Chris Smith gives you a head start on both the fundamentals and the advanced concepts of the F# language.
Smith has taken the time to write the one book that explains the F# language "from soup to nuts, without skipping important features because they weren’t finished yet." But he’s most excited by the importance of the language itself: "The most exciting thing about F# isn’t that it helps extend the reach of the .NET platform, but it also brings new developers to .NET," he says.
Smith continues, "F# is going to be an extremely important language for some people, but not everybody. Right now there are legions of C# and VB.NET developers who are happy with their language, so to them F# is just a blip on the radar. But for anybody who currently feels they are struggling against their language and fighting against the code, F# will have a huge impact."
Programming F# will help you:
- Get a clear understanding of functional programming, and how you can use it to simplify code
- Gain a solid understanding of the language’s core syntax, including object-oriented and imperative styles
- Simplify concurrent and parallel programming with F# Asynchronous Workflows and the Parallel Extensions to .NET
- Learn advanced F# concepts, such as quotations and computation expressions
Advance Praise:
"This book emphasizes simple, clear explanations of the foundational elements of F#, always with an eye on the enjoyment that comes from programming in general, and programming with F# in particular."
–Don Syme, Principal Researcher and F# Designer, Microsoft Research
Chris Smith is a Software Design Engineer on the F# team at Microsoft. Although he helped design the language, his official role is to test the product to make sure it is ready to ship. Which means he understands the details of F# better than anybody else on the team. You can read his blog at Chris Smith’s Complete Unique View.