Expert F# is about practical
programming in a beautiful language that puts the power
and elegance of functional programming into the hands of
.NET developers. In combination with .NET, F# achieves
unrivaled levels of programmer productivity and program
clarity. This books serves as
- The authoritative guide to F# by the designer of
F#
- A comprehensive reference of F# concepts, syntax,
and features
- A treasury of expert F# techniques for practical,
real-world programming
While inspired by
OCaml, F# isn't just another functional programming
language. Drawing on many of the strengths of both OCaml
and .NET, it's a general-purpose language ideal for
real-world development. F# integrates functional,
imperative, and object-oriented programming styles so
you can flexibly and elegantly solve programming
problems, and brings .NET development alive with
interactive execution. Whatever your background, you'll
find that F# is easy to learn, fun to use, and
extraordinarily powerful. F# will help change the way
you think about and go about programming.
Written by
F#'s designer and two active contributors,
Expert
F# is
the authoritative, comprehensive,
and in-depth guide to the language and its use. Designed
to help others become experts, the book gives a thorough
introduction to the F# language from quick essentials to
in-depth advanced topics such as active pattern
matching, aggregate data types and operators, sequence
expressions, lazy values, mutable data and side-effects,
generics, type augmentations, functional decomposition
and code organization.
The second half of the book
is devoted to examining the practical application of F#,
providing elegant solutions to common programming tasks
including UI implementation, data access, web and
distributed programming, symbolic and numerical
computations, concurrent programming, testing,
profiling, and interoperability with other languages.
The latest hot developments in F# and .NET are also
addressed, including Active Patterns, implicit class
construction, integration with LINQ over relational
data, meta programming and useful tips for working with
Visual Studio and F# command-line tools.
The worlds
foremost experts in F# show you how to program in F# the
way they do!
What you’ll learn
- How to use F# for functional, imperative, and
object-oriented programming
- How to code elegant F# solutions with expert
technique and style
- How to develop Windows, web, graphics, and
database applications in F#
- How to do numerical, concurrent, lexical, and
symbolic processing in F#
- How to interoperate with C and COM
Who this book is for
This book is for anyone
interested in state-of-the art .NET programming.
Professional programmers will find it engrossing. F#
provides invaluable insight into the future of both C#
and VB, which are now adopting some (but far from all)
of the functional features of F#. Once they learn F#,
few feel like returning to either C# or VB. The academic
community will find F# the answer to a decades-long
prayer: a language suitable for teaching computer
science that also excites and empowers students because
it can be used not just in the classroom, but also in
the real world.
