Inside F#

(EDIT: see also this page)

It’s mid-May now, which means it’s been more than 8 months since we released the first CTP of F# in early September 2008 (F# 1.9.6.2).  We’ve seen continually strong download numbers for that release, and the F# user base continues to grow.  I love it; it is great to be working on a product that so many people are enjoying (as well as a product that is making people more productive!). 

Since the last release, a ton of great content (blogs, Q&A, videos, etc.) about F# has been published on the web, and so I decided to summarize my favorite online content for learning F#.  Of course, the very first link you need is the Microsoft F# Developer Center, as it has well-organized links to much of the content listed below.  But I have my own favorites, so here they are.

Videos

Luca’s An Introduction to Microsoft F# video from PDC2008 is fantastic – I can’t say enough good things about it.  If you want the overview talk of what F# is all about, as well as the chance to watch someone build an F# app and talk about the main syntax/features/etc, then grab a comfy chair and sit back and watch this terrific presentation.

There is also a good recent video posted on Channel 9 of Don talking about F# and demoing a number of F#’s interactive features.

The Microsoft F# Dev Center has links to more videos about F#.

Q&A

If you’ve got questions about F#, the F# community has answers!  There are two terrific Q&A sites for getting your F# questions answered:

• hubFS is billed as "THE place for F#" – a Q&A forum devoted entirely to F#
• StackOverflow is a site for all kinds of programming questions, and you’ll find many F# questions and answers there

Both sites have a strong readership, and the time between posting an F# question and receiving a useful answer is often measured in mere minutes.

One StackOverflow question is worth calling out: "Getting started with F#", as it is very apropos for this blog entry.

My blog

Of course my own blog entries are among my favorites.  :)  For reference, here is a list of my own blog entries that I think will be useful to people learning F#:

• The basic syntax of F# – keywords and constructs
• The basic syntax of F# – classes, interfaces, and members
• The basic syntax of F# – types
• F# function types: fun with tuples and currying
• Discriminated unions in F#
• Pipelining in F#
• What does this C# code look like in F#? (part one: expressions and statements)

(For a more complete overview of F#, you may consider checking out (or contributing to) the F# Wikibook.)

Blogs by Microsoft people

Many of the people who work full time on F# have blogs:

• Don Syme’s blog
• Brian McNamara’s Inside F# (you are here!)
• Chris Smith’s blog
• Luke Hoban’s blog
• Jomo Fisher’s Sharp Things

Additionally there are some other MS people who also blog a bit about F#:

• Andrew Kennedy’s blog
• Luca Bolognese’s blog
• Dustin Campbell’s Did it with .NET

There is a ton of content on the web regarding F#; here’s a great aggregated feed of F# content:

• Planet F# feed

That’s all for now – I hope you find these links helpful!