Expert One-on-One™ C# Design and Development

Chapter 24. Augmenting Applications Using F#

You may think you already have enough computer languages from which to choose. To a certain extent, you probably do. Theoretically, you could build any application desired using just machine code, but few people would argue that using machine code alone would provide a very productive environment. In fact, it has been at least 20 years since I worked with machine code. Computer languages came about because developers needed faster ways to work than machine code provided. The reason for newer languages is always the same. Sure, C is a great language, but C++ is better, and many developers would argue that C# is better still. Consequently, this chapter argues that Microsoft's F# is simply another in a long series of language updates designed to supplement your current language in a specific way.

At the time of this writing, F# is still essentially a beta product, which means that the results you obtain depend a lot on how the installation performs, your particular configuration, and the version of Visual Studio that you use. Don't let the term Community Technology Preview (CTP) fool you — you're beta testing F# for Microsoft. F# is already stable enough for noncritical applications and you should definitely use it for experimentation. However, because Microsoft is still working on F#, you should probably avoid using it for critical applications. Remember that it's important to create reliable applications and beta language products tend ...