F# is the functional language of choice for the .NET framework: Its core resembles the core of OCaml, and its extensions over OCaml allow direct access to the full .NET infrastructure. Moreover, F# is a full citizen of the language set of Visual Studio 2010. However, the .NET/Visual Studio culture may sometimes seem a little alien to a functional programmer coming from a different language: Some of the terminology is subtly different, the documentation is sometimes hard to navigate, and some programming choices are hard to make. ("Classes or sum types?"; "What unit testing framework?"; "WPF or Forms"? etc.)
This tutorial is meant to bridge this gap: We'll go over the language core quickly, and then cover some advanced topics relevant to the working programmer, including:
We'll do some hands-on exercises, and then you can be on your way, hacking.
Audience should be familiar with at least one other functional language.
By far the most convenient way to follow the tutorial on your computer is within Windows: Get a version of Visual Studio that works with F#. F# ships with Visual Studio 2010, it works with the free Visual Studio 2010 Shell, and it can be installed as an add-on to Visual Studio 2008.
Details are on Microsoft's F# page.
If you must run F# outside Windows, you should get a recent version of
the Mono .NET-compatible run time from the Mono download
page. For Mac OS X, the latest version 2.10 is broken - get the slightly older version 2.8. If you're installing a Linux package of Mono or installing
from source, F# is probably not included: Check if there's a binary
fsc in the path after installation of Mono.
If you have Mono but not F# yet, get the F# distribution as a
.zip file from Microsoft's F#
page.
Unzip it somewhere convenient, and run the
install-mono.sh shell script in the top-level directory.
(This will instruct you to download and install a key file.)
You should create front-end scripts fsc and
fsi in your path, that should look approximately like this:
# !/bin/sh
exec mono .../FSharp-2.0.0.0/bin/fsc.exe "$@"(Replacing the ... by the location where you unzipped the F# distribution.)
As to editing F# files outside of Visual Studio, it's probably best if you bring a plain text editor that can indent without creating tabs. If you know your way around Elisp, you may consider downloading and installing the F# Emacs Mode.
You may be tempted to download MonoDevelop and install the F# plugin, but you need versions of Mono, MonoDevelop and the F# plugin (not the latest) that are just right. This is probably not worth the effort.
Finally, you'll also need the NUnit unit-testing framework, which can be downloaded from NUnit's download page.
is a software architect with Active Group in Filderstadt, Germany. He's done research on functional programmince since 1995, and has used functional programming in a wide variety commercial projects since