Microsoft touts functional programming with F#

Integrates the F# language into Visual Studio 2008

By Paul Krill

September 3, 2008 (InfoWorld) Microsoft Corp. is boosting integration of functional programming with its Visual Studio 2008 software development platform.

Improved integration is featured in a September Community Technology Preview of the F# language for the .Net platform. F# has been positioned as a language based on concepts of functional programming, in which computation is treated as the evaluation of mathematical functions. It also supports object-oriented programming.

"This release marks an important step along the path we laid out in October to integrate the F# language into Visual Studio and to continue innovating and evolving F#," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog entry this week.

Functional programming has been viewed as valuable in domains such as the financial and scientific realms, as well as technical computing. Microsoft has described F# as combining type safety, performance and scripting with the advantages of running on a modern runtime. And it has said that it intends to make the language a "first-class citizen" on .Net.

Accessible here, the CTP features improvements to the F# language and libraries to make them simpler and more regular, Somasegar said. "Broadly improved" Visual Studio 2008 integration allows F# users to scale from scripting and explorative development to large-scale component and application design from within Visual Studio.

Also, with the CTP Microsoft is introducing a language feature called "Units of Measure," which extends F# inference and strong typing to floating-point data.

Another Microsoft blogger, Don Syme, who has spearheaded development of F# in the Microsoft Research group, cited added support for scripting in the language, compiler and Visual Studio via the CTP. An improved project system, meanwhile, enables large-scale, tool-based software development with F#.

"One of the key things about F# is that it spans the spectrum from interactive, explorative scripting to component and large-scale software development," Syme said.

The new F# Language Services provides more reliable IntelliSense typing tips.

"Programming with F# can be enormously fun and rewarding, as well as just plain productive. This is now more true than ever, and we hope you enjoy using F# as much as we do," Syme said.

Additionally, Microsoft has launched an F# Development Center on MSDN, providing resources for developers and links to F# user communities. F# has been a joint project of Microsoft's Developer Division and Microsoft Research.

Reprinted with permission from

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