Expert F# 3.0

What Hacker News says

1. bmitcAug 2022
   Yes, please do! Warning: F# will ruin other languages for you. I find it rather painful to work in basically anything else after using F#, with gradients of pain for different languages. Haha.

   And that's a good question. I have basically every book written on F#, but I can't say I have ever used them for anything more than reference.

   The official docs/guide/reference are actually really good, and I refer to them a lot when using some feature I'm not familiar with: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/what-is-fshar...

   F# For Fun and Profit is well-known, but I can't say I use it a lot: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/

   The same author's (Scott Wlaschin) book is very good: https://pragprog.com/titles/swdddf/domain-modeling-made-func...

   As for books, I have always liked:

   * Functional Programming Using F# by Hansen and Rischel (might be too simple if you are already comfortable with functional programming and is out of date every now and then with changes to F# that's happened)

   * Expert F# 4.0 by Don Syme and others (contains a lot of nice things by the designer of F#

   One of the latest books is Stylish F# 6: Crafting Elegant Functional Code for .NET 6 by Kit Eason. I have the first edition but haven't read it.

   My personal recommendation is to take the approach of type/domain driven design. That is, I start off every F# module the same:

   1. Define my types with discriminated unions, records, type aliases (such as for tuples) or single case discriminated unions. Use classes when necessary but try to prefer the more functional types.

   2. Start writing functions against these.

   And that's basically it. One thing to recognize with F# is that it mixes OOP rather nicely. Even discriminated unions and records, which are immutable, can have members defined on them, including operator overloading (something F# is pretty good about). They can even implement interfaces and be defined with generic types, which is also nice and powerful.

   I have some projects that might of interest, since they're simple enough and illustrate the above process.

   https://github.com/bmitc/the-ray-tracer-challenge-fsharp

   https://github.com/bmitc/nand2tetris

   Lastly, I'd suggest just starting up some projects. You could also take the Programming Languages course on Coursera by Dan Grossman. Part A uses SML, and you could port the examples and homework solutions to F# (I did so when I took the course). I also take books written for other languages and port the code to F#, usually taking a more idiomatic functional style. .NET Interactive notebooks (https://github.com/dotnet/interactive) are a great way to get started. You just need to install the .NET 6 SDK (which gets you F#) and then install the .NET Interactive Notebook extension in VS Code. That's it. There is also the book The Little MLer which gets people comfortable with discriminated unions (sum types), and I used the book and ported the examples to F#. I need to go back and finish that annotation project (https://github.com/bmitc/the-little-fsharper). I'll probably convert the script files to .NET Interactive notebooks if I do.

   Show morethread
2. oxryly1Jul 2017
   https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com is great. I'm enjoying Don Syme's book "Expert F# 4.0" as well.
   thread
3. matteuanJul 2017
   I think there is nothing better than the book: Expert F# https://www.amazon.de/Expert-F-4-0-Don-Syme/dp/1484207416/re...
   thread
4. fslothSep 2015
   For Erlang, there is the book by Joe Armstrong:

   https://pragprog.com/book/jaerlang2/programming-erlang

   The problem with learning functional languages is finding pragmatic learning materials.

   I would claim F# is currently the most approachable functional language (just my opinion but I have at least toyed with the other mainstream offerings).

   My background is also in C++. The F# materials listed helped me personally to develop as a programmer and have made approaching other languages like Erlang easier.

   Sestoft's programming language concepts: https://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/plc/

   Expert F# 3.0 contains lots of short snippets and examples: http://www.apress.com/9781430246503

   Flying frog consultancys materials are steep in price but I found them worth my dime (Visual F# 2010 for Technical Computing and the materials in The F# Journal) http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/index.html

   Show morethread
5. jastApr 2015
   Have you looked at http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/ ? This site contains lots of useful information and would be enough to get started. Another possibility is to read a few books, e.g., Expert F# 3.0, F# Deep Dives.
   thread
6. raphaeljFeb 2013
   The book by Don Syme (one of the F# creators) is pretty good as it gives an short, yet complete, introduction to the language to people with a functional and .NET background.

   http://www.amazon.com/Expert-F-3-0-Apress/dp/1430246502/

   I've started functional programming by reading the book about F# by Tomas Petricek. It was really good because it target learning functional programming to someone who have a solid OO background.

   http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Functional-Programming-Toma...

   Show morethread