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How you can get started with F# today

by Richard Minerich on Mar 25, 2011

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Who has used F# before?Who has made a significant project in F#?
F# has a ton of new constructs to explore and will open your mind to completely new ways of doing things. Things you never thought possible before.You don’t need to understand of this stuff to enjoy F#, but it has a lot to explore if you’re into that kind of thing. Even if you don’t use F# professionally, just learning how these things work will make you a better programmer in general.
If you care about getting things done quickly, and programming is just a means to an end F# can get you there quickly and safely.
Start with a few simple problems. The first step is to get comfortable with the syntax and constructs.Even if you never use F# at work, learning it will make you a better programmer.
Don’t be afraid to start out with object oriented and imperative code to get started. Just know that F# will push back. It wants you to write functional code.Don’t worry if the problems are easy, think of it as a structured way to play with F# constructs
I wrote an ant colony AI simulation in Silverlight with uploadable AI. Give it a go when you get some time.
F# has a lot of great graphics frameworks. Youcan make beautiful graphics with very little code.FsChart (left), VSLab (middle top), Tomas’s F# Library forLearning Graphics (top right), Jon Harrop F# for Visualization (bottom right)Tomas’s Graphics Lib: https://github.com/tpetricek/Documents/tree/master/Talks%202011/Teaching%20F%23%20(Community%20for%20F%23)

How you can get started with F# today
Richard Minerich(F# MVP)
@Rickasaurus
RichardMinerich.com
If you love to code, you’ll love F#.
Immutable Data Structures
Tail Recursion
Discriminated Unions
Partial Application
Function Composition
Statically Resolved Type Parameters
Computation Expressions
Quotations
If you hate to code, you’ll love F#
Functional may be new to you
but F# is multi-paradigm.
Start small, work your way up.
Don’t be afraid to use what you know.
Some problems will start to scream
“This would be much easier in F#!”
Try some simple Katas and Puzzles
Project Euler is a great place to start.
See http://is.gd/TheRoadToFunctional
And http://is.gd/TheTedNewardChallenge
Write some Simple Ant AI
Check it out at: http://is.gd/FSharpSilverlightAnts
Make something beautiful
Find Some Functional Friends
The Community For F# Online
www.communityforfsharp.net
The NYC F# User Group
www.meetup.com/nyc-fsharp
The Cambridge F# User Group
fsug.org
The San Francisco Bay Area F# User Group
www.sfsharp.org
F#unctional Londoners
www.meetup.com/FSharpLondon
Check out the Community
Weekly Blog Roundup - FSharpCentral.com
F# Forums - HubFS.net
IRC Chat - irc.freenode.net/##fsharp
Read a Book