Welcome to Get Programming with F#!
Welcome to F#! I hope that you’re reading this book because you’ve heard something interesting about F# and want to learn more about how to start using it within your daily work cycle. Perhaps you’ve heard something about its data processing capabilities, or that it can lead to systems with fewer bugs, or that it can lead to more rapid development cycles than C# or VB .NET. These are all true, but there’s a whole lot more to F# than just that. F# presents a whole host of possibilities to you as a .NET developer that will open your eyes to a better way to develop software—one that leads to you enjoying what you do more, while making you more productive in your job.
This introduction summarizes at a high level what F# is (and isn’t!), and then discusses some of the benefits that you’ll receive from using it. We won’t spend much time looking at the language in this introduction, so you’ll have to take some of what I say at face value; but you’ll end up with a good idea of where F# can potentially fit in with your day-to-day role. We’ll also cover the relationship of F# within the wider context of the .NET ecosystem, as well as taking a look at the F# community and how F# fits into the open source world. At the end of this introductory lesson, you’ll have a good understanding of the what and why of F#; the rest of the book will then explain the how!