Foundations of F#

by Robert Pickering

Book Overview

This is the first book to bring F# to the world. It is likely to have many imitators but few competitors. Written by F# evangelist, Rob Pickering, and tech reviewed by F#'s inventor, Don Syme, it is an elegant, comprehensive introduction to all aspects of the language and an incisive guide to using F# for real-world professional development. It is detailed, yet clear and concise, and suitable for readers at any level of experience. Functional programming...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590597575
• ISBN13: 9781590597576
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Great introduction

When presenting a new language like F#, one must address the biggest problems associated with it: *getting a feel for the language *showing how to do real tasks (WPF, WCF and ASP.Net being the most common nowadays) *showing how to interoperate with the rest of the world (languages "out there" need to play nice with libraries and other languages) This book does all this with great explanations and sufficient detail. Just one warning: the F# language is a moving target, so a few minor differences here and there will definitely be encountered, due to the changes in the language. Also, learning a new language like F# is a wonderful experience, even for those programmers who will not use it: the benefit to one's abilities for reasoning about code will be immediately evident; this said, functional languages are harder to learn for mainstream programmers who expect the next C/C#/Java/Python clone...

To me, it has been the other way around.

Some reviewers say other books are more gentle towards the beginner, but honestly in my case it has been the opposite. We have several F# books at the office and I've read fragments from all of them but this is the one that really got me started. I've been programming (imperatively and OO) for decades and I've used other functional languages such as Scheme but as far as F#, I'm a newcomer. Obviously, this book doesn't cover certain topics the other books do (like Active Patterns or Workflows) but that's why the book is called "Foundations". Basically, this book simply does a better job answering my dozens of syntax questions shortly after they arise. I already know what recursion is, thank you very much, I just needed someone to tell me why the | was sometimes missing after the 'match' keyword or about the 'function' keyword (not to be confused with 'fun') and how it can be used instead of 'match', etc. Call me obsessive, but all those small snippets of information make a world of difference to me. I'm sure the other books clarify at least some of these elements in later chapters but I'm the kind of reader that needs his questions answered sooner than later.

Good book for .NET programmers that want to learn an exciting functional language

Foundations of F# presents the F# language, a functional programming language that runs on the .NET platform. The language is from the ML family, mostly similar to OCaml, and is a functional language with a decidedly pragmatic orientation. It is a great tool for two kinds of people: 1) .NET programmers that want a more productive and expressive language, incorporating more recent advances in programming language technology; and 2) functional programmers that want a language that has many good libraries and can integrate effortlessly with a platform as widespread as .NET. The book is clearly targeted to the first group, but is useful to people from the second one as well. The first six chapters present the language, and the three main paradigms it embodies: functional, imperative and object-oriented programming. Chapter 6 is a useful look at program structuring, covering modules, namespaces, annotations and quoting. The next chapters are devoted to libraries available to the F# programmer, including Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET, network programming, web services, and data access. This pretty much covers most of what's necessary in real applications. The examples show very well how to use the libraries from the .NET platform, even if you have never had contact with them. I guess these chapters will be the most heavily used in my copy of the book. Then comes Chapter 11 on Language-Oriented Programming using F#: Metaprogramming and Domain-Specific Languages. Creating language processors is one of the main application areas for languages like F#, and this chapter is a good showcase for it. It covers lexer and parser generation, quotations and an interpreter for a little arithmetic language. The final chapter covers details about how to use the F# tools and is mostly for reference purposes. Overall, it's a good book for people new to functional programming and/or the .NET platform. It has many examples to present the main aspects not only of the language, but also of its enviroment (.NET). It doesn't go very deep into most of the topics; I would have liked more about quotations, reflection and metaprogramming, for instance. But then, it's not an advanced book, so it was to be expected. The advanced book on F#, Expert F# (Expert), is about to be published.

Great book for a great computer language

This is an excellent book for a practical introduction to the F# language. The best part of the book for me was its discussion of how to connect F# with C#. The fact is, even though F# is a functional language, it has to live in a C# world. In fact, I think this book might be a little bit better than the Expert F# book at explaining how to get F# to work with OO types and events (They're both great books). I also really liked his discussions which encouraged OO-programmers to try new techniques that they might not have immediately considered (because an OO-programmer's knee-jerk reaction to everything is to create an object)...I almost wished he talked more about programming style. So, I guess my only real complaint about the book is that it isn't thick enough...but that's about it. I hope he writes more books about F# soon...maybe one on F# programming style. It's a must-have for anyone wanting to learn F# (or anyone wanting to get a sneak peek at where C# will be in 10 years).

Must have book in your bookshelf about F#

"Foundations of F#" is a great introductory book for F# with some advanced samples. For those who are unfamiliar with functional programming, this book gives the notions of functional programming in all aspects while giving samples in the greatest platform with great language F#. This book includes functional, imperative and object oriented programming paradigms giving great samples. Robert Pickering also focuses to the imperative programmers by giving the usage differences in F#. He introduces a wide range F# data structures from simple arrays to quotations with great explanations. This book gives a lot of information on .NET Framework including the latest additions .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5. Samples with LINQ and Windows Presentation Foundation fulfil this area. If you are unfamiliar with .NET Framework, don't worry this book gives what you need to know about .NET Framework in many different areas including network programming, web programming, database programming, and windows programming with clear and explanatory samples using relevant screenshots. The samples are unique and useful, it's not the examples that you can find on the web, and it's more specialised and focused on techniques specific to F# Personally I most liked Language Oriented Programming chapter which gives very specific features and usage tricks to F# to make the most of the language. It's a must have book in your bookshelf if you are interested in functional programming on .NET Framework