Expert F#

Don Syme, Adam Granicz

Springer Verlag, Dec 10, 2007 - Computers - 609 pages

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 user interface 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.

What people are saying

Review: Expert F#

User Review  - Igor Plotnikov - Goodreads

Good definitive guide to F#. Highly recommended.

Review: Expert F#

User Review  - Scott - Goodreads

With multi-core processors, functional programming is quite beneficial. F# uses the .NET libraries for functional programming. I hope to continue my pursuit of this.

About the author

Don Syme is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and the main designer of F#. Since joining Microsoft Research in 1998, he has been a seminal contributor to a wide variety of leading-edge projects, including generics in C# and the .NET Common Language Runtime, F# itself, F# asynchronous programming and units of measure in F#. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 1999.

Adam Granicz is the chief executive officer of IntelliFactory, the leading provider of F# training, development and consulting services, and technologies that enable rapid functional, reactive web development. He has over six years of experience applying F# in commercial projects, and works on WebSharper, IntelliFactory's web development platform that offers unrivaled productivity, a uniform programming model based on F#, and the fastest way to develop robust, client-based rich Internet applications. Adam is an active F# evangelist, a regular author in online F# media and speaker at development conferences and industry partners, and serves on the steering committee of the Commercial Users of Functional Programming (CUFP) Workshop, representing the F# segment.

Antonio Cisternino is a professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of Pisa. His primary research is on scientific computing, meta-programming and domain-specific languages on virtual-machine-based execution environments. He has been active in the .NET community since 2001 and developed VSLab, a Microsoft Visual Studio add-in to support MATLAB-like programming in F# and Visual Studio. He is also author of annotated C#, an extension of C#, and Robotics4.NET, a framework for programming robots with Microsoft .NET. Cisternino holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pisa.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Expert F#; Apresspod Series; Books for professionals by professionals; The expert's voice in .NET
• Authors: Don Syme, Adam Granicz
• Editor: Antonio Cisternino
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Springer Verlag, 2007
• ISBN: 1590598504, 9781590598504
• Length: 609 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Programming / General; Computers / Programming Languages / General; Computers / Software Development & Engineering / General