Expert F# (Expert's Voice in .Net) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Don Syme, Adam Granicz, Antonio Cisternino
Publisher: Apress
Category: Book
List Price: $69.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 46446
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 609
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 1590598504
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9781590598504
ASIN: 1590598504
Publication Date: December 4, 2007
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Condition: New book,ships out next business day,100% satisfaction guaranteed,may have slight shelf wear.
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Product Description
Expert F# is about practical programming in a beautiful language that puts the power and elegance of functional programming into the hands of .NET developers. In combination with .NET, F# achieves unrivaled levels of programmer productivity and program clarity. This books serves as - The authoritative guide to F# by the designer of F#
- A comprehensive reference of F# concepts, syntax, and features
- A treasury of expert F# techniques for practical, real–world programming
While inspired by OCaml, F# isn't just another functional programming language. Drawing on many of the strengths of both OCaml and .NET, it's a general–purpose language ideal for real–world development. F# integrates functional, imperative, and object–oriented programming styles so you can flexibly and elegantly solve programming problems, and brings .NET development alive with interactive execution. Whatever your background, you'll find that F# is easy to learn, fun to use, and extraordinarily powerful. F# will help change the way you think about and go about programming. Written by F#'s designer and two active contributors, Expert F# is the authoritative, comprehensive, and in-depth guide to the language and its use. Designed to help others become experts, the book gives a thorough introduction to the F# language from quick essentials to in-depth advanced topics such as active pattern matching, aggregate data types and operators, sequence expressions, lazy values, mutable data and side–effects, generics, type augmentations, functional decomposition and code organization. The second half of the book is devoted to examining the practical application of F#, providing elegant solutions to common programming tasks including UI implementation, data access, web and distributed programming, symbolic and numerical computations, concurrent programming, testing, profiling, and interoperability with other languages. The latest hot developments in F# and .NET are also addressed, including Active Patterns, implicit class construction, integration with LINQ over relational data, meta programming and useful tips for working with Visual Studio and F# command–line tools. The worlds foremost experts in F# show you how to program in F# the way they do!
What you’ll learn - How to use F# for functional, imperative, and object–oriented programming
- How to code elegant F# solutions with expert technique and style
- How to develop Windows, web, graphics, and database applications in F#
- How to do numerical, concurrent, lexical, and symbolic processing in F#
- How to interoperate with C and COM
Who is this book for? This book is for anyone interested in state–of–the art .NET programming. Professional programmers will find it engrossing. F# provides invaluable insight into the future of both C# and VB, which are now adopting some (but far from all) of the functional features of F#. Once they learn F#, few feel like returning to either C# or VB. The academic community will find F# the answer to a decades–long prayer: a language suitable for teaching computer science that also excites and empowers students because it can be used not just in the classroom, but also in the real world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Best book on F# September 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Expert F# does a great job explaining why and how you should use F#. It is not a general purpose tutorial on functional programming. The title "Expert" should be a hint that some (maybe... 25%?) of the topics are going to be advanced and move fast. If you're completely new to functional programming, Real World Haskell (already out) and Real World Functional Programming (Tomas Petricek, 2009) are good resources to get you in the right mindset.
Regardless, this book covers the many aspects of F# and is the best general resource on F# so far.
Good book! June 15, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
It's definitely a good book. I've read a few sections in it and have been impressed with what I've seen. The book is targeted toward specific implementations of F# in various settings. I like that but think other people won't. The techniques described are quite powerful. I'd say this is a must for experts in the .NET languages.
 Seems kinda rushed, disjointed May 27, 2008
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is my amended review after reading the other reviews for the first time. I totally agree with Muhammad, who also gave this book a 2 star rating. I can't believe people are giving this book rave reviews (I think some of the reviewers are being paid). I read lots of computer books, and this one just isn't that well written in comparison. It is quite apparent to me that the authors do not write applications for a living. Instead of "Expert F#" it should be "Academic F#". From an expert, you expect advice on the best way to do things, things you should avoid, and alternatives. This book does not have any of this kind of information.
Here is my original review:
Functional languages are "hot" because of the promise of easy multiprocessing and reduced error rates. So great, I'll buy this book and convert my C# code, so it can work with all these multi-core chips.
Be warned, this book falls short of real world examples and uses. Its examples seem more of interest to the academic community than business applications. Most if the book is of the nature, "this is what you can do" instead of "in this situation; this is the best way to do it."
It also assumes a lot of background in functional languages. Yes, it states "Expert", but really how many OCaml programmers are there? It really could use numerous examples of C# or VB code rewritten in F#.
This is not to say there is not a lot of good information here and there are not a lot of alternatives. It is nice having this information all in one place. I am still sold that F# and functional languages are the future of programming, but just be warned the learning curve will be high.
Not to be used as your first source for learning functional programming May 23, 2008
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
For a background about the reviewer, I am a software developer with 5 years of experience. I have programmed in C# and C++ only.
This is one of the first books to be written about F#. Taking into consideration that F# works on top of the .NET framework and all previous .NET Languages didn't include a functional language, most intended audience should be expected to have little or no background of functional programing while having a good background of imperative programming.
Functional programming is a whole new world for imperative programmers, a world with new restrictions and new ways of thinking. Unfortunately this book doesn't give a good explanation for functional programming concepts, it is explaining the language syntax most of the time. Even when explaining language syntax it is always missing things that you find explained in discussions and tutorials online. This book acts more as a syntax reference more than a book to learn from.
If you have no background about F# or functional programming then this book will not make things easy for you. You have to use another source with this book, either a series of tutorials or some articles or a discussion board.
Excellent book to have fun and be productive in .NET April 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As an experienced programmer, notably in C#, Scheme & Haskell, with no prior F# exposure, I've found Expert F# a joy to read and its level just right. The book reflects the language F# itself: it's elegant, fun & practical.
Genuinely interesting, the code samples never appear contrived, as is usually the case in a text presenting a language. Actually, Expert F# goes well beyond teaching F#: it is a compelling demonstration of effective functional programming and I am sure I've grown as a programmer by reading it. It's also a book I've found myself coming back to, gaining new insights at each careful reading.
My favorite chapter is Introducing Language-Oriented Programming (ch.9), which is packed with fascinating examples: probabilistic workflows, schema compilation by reflecting on types, and using F# quotations for error estimation (though see a correction to the math here: http://cs.hubfs.net/forums/5508/ShowThread.aspx), to name just the three most striking.
In short, I enthusiastically recommend Expert F#, specially if your task requires you to program on the .NET platform. Though C# is OK, F# is more elegant, more fun & more productive -- you won't be looking back.
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