Expert F# 2.0

Expert F# 2.0 is about practical programming in a beautiful language that puts the power and elegance of functional programming into the hands of professional developers. In combination with .NET, F# achieves unrivaled levels of programmer productivity and program clarity.

Expert F# 2.0 is

• The authoritative guide to F# by the inventor of F#
• A comprehensive reference of F# concepts, syntax, and features
• A treasury of expert F# techniques for practical, real-world programming

F# isn't just another functional programming language. It's a general-purpose language ideal for real-world development. F# seamlessly integrates functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming styles so you can flexibly and elegantly solve any programming problem. Whatever your background, you’ll find that F# is easy to learn, fun to use, and extraordinarily powerful. F# will change the way you think about–and go about–programming.

Written by F#'s inventor and two major contributors to its development, Expert F# 2.0 is the authoritative, comprehensive, and in-depth guide to the language and its use. Designed to help others become experts, the first part of the book quickly yet carefully describes the F# language. The second part then shows how to use F# elegantly for a wide variety of practical programming tasks.

The world's foremost experts in F# show you how to program in F# the way they do!

What you’ll learn

• Explore F# and its features quickly and thoroughly in the introductory chapters
• Use F# with the newest .NET technologies such as WPF, LINQ, and ASP.NET AJAX
• Build reactive, asynchronous, and distributed applications with F#
• Interoperate with F# from other .NET languages, especially C#
• Test, profile, and performance tune F# applications
• Work with real-life examples and advanced programming features

Expert F# 2.0 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 programmers 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.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Getting Started with F# and NET
3. Creating Your First F# Program—Introducing Functional Programming
4. Introducing Imperative Programming
5. Mastering Types and Generics
6. Working with Objects and Modules
7. Encapsulating and Packaging Your Code
8. Mastering F#: Common Techniques
9. Introducing Language-Oriented Programming
10. Using the F# and NET Libraries
11. Building Graphical User Interfaces
12. Working with Symbolic Representations
13. Reactive, Asynchronous, and Parallel Programming
14. Building Smart Web Applications
15. Working with Data
16. Lexing and Parsing
17. Interoperating with C and COM
18. Debugging and Testing F# Programs
19. Designing F# Libraries

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 thechief executive officerof 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.