In F#, you have the choice of using a struct or a record as a lightweight container for data. The similarities between the two are striking – both are immutable by default, neither can be inherited, and they both offer structural equality semantics by default too! However, there’s a key difference between them, their performance [...]

In my previous post on discriminated unions, I presented discriminated unions as an alternative to standard .Net classes to represent hierarchical data structures. However, in terms of data structure, discriminated unions share much more similarities with enums than they do classes – both allow you to define a set of named constants and associate some [...]

By default, tuples, discriminated unions and records have what is known as structural equality – i.e. if two instances of these types have the same set of values then they are considered equal, just like value types – despite being reference types: Tuples Discriminated Unions Records To facilitate this form of equality, the F# compiler [...]

Pattern matching is everywhere in F#, you can use it in let bindings, in function parameters, in for loops, everywhere, and it is totally amazing. It is in my opinion one of the best features of F#, and in functional languages in general, heck, Erlang goes as far as not having an assignment operator and [...]

Ayande posted a tax calculation challenge the other day here, and here’s my F# solution for the challenge: Enjoy!