Why you should use F#

This post was written by Phillip Carter and Mads Torgersen. Both work on languages on the .NET team.

At Build 2017, we presented a tech talk entitled “Why You Should Use F#”. However, not everyone can attend Build, and many attendees were unable to find a position in the room where they could adequately hear us. You can see the talk for yourself in video format if you haven’t seen it already.

In this talk, we cover:

• Adressing thoughts people have about adopting F#
• As Microsoft, we really do embrace F#
• F# is used for big things, including Jet.com, who you saw at the keynote
• The F# Open Source community is incredible and built many features
• Advanced Autocompletion for F#
• Rename refactoring using the same UI and underlying infrastructure as C#
• Type Providers are one of the best features of F#, especially for data wrangling and analysis
• F# is getting features that C# doesn’t even have
• Lots of F# documentation showing ways to learn F#

We recommend watching the talk to see much of the above points in action. If you haven’t tried F# before, there’s no better time than now! Functional programming is on the rise, and now is the best time to start learning.  There are multiple ways to get started, written in the official documentation:

Getting Started with Visual Studio

Getting Started with Visual Studio for Mac

Getting Started with Visual Studio Code and Ionide

Getting Started with Command-line Tools

You can also get a thematic overview of F# and its features with the popular Tour of F# document.

Additionally, you can use F# for Azure Functions and Azure Notebooks. It’s fully supported in both services. Go forth and give it a try today!

Finally, F# is also backed by an independent foundation, the F# Software Foundation (FSSF). The FSSF is free to join, has an active community, and has a mentorship program that anyone can take part in. When you join, you get access to the FSSF slack, which has over 1200 members. If you’re interested in F#, feel free to join! It’s free and has no obligations on your part.