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Draft Chapter 2 of "Expert F#": Essential Language Features
f#booktutorial

Syndicated from [link:blogs.msdn.com]

[ Editors Note: there are a couple of minor issues that readers have spotted with the draft chapter

  • When using the F# Interactive console window with F# 1.1.12 you MUST currently place ";;" on a SEPARATE line, and not at the end of the line as shown in the book. When using it with Visual Studio you don't need the ";;" at all.
  • F# Interactive does not print all values in exactly the same way as shown in the book ]

I'm very glad to announce the availability of an early draft of Chapter 2 of a book on F# which I'm currently in the process of co-authoring. The projected title of the book is, unabashedly, "Expert F#". This is one of two F# books planned for publication by Apress in 2007 (having seen early drafts I can say the other one will also be great!)

The chapter covers most of the language constructs in tutorial mode, with the exception of object oriented programming, which will be covered in Chapter 3. (I hope to make a draft of Chapter 3 available fairly soon - if you'd like a very early draft then please contact me directly! )

I trust you will find this a useful resource for learning F# - it has been favourably received by people at MSR Cambridge. We'll update the draft for minor fixes, though of course the final version will be available in the book.

This is only a draft that has not undergone formal technical or copy editing, so please just ignore egregious mistakes and be patient with poor formatting and dangling symbolic cross-references (for various reasons Apress do not use Word cross-referencing and prefer to do it later in the production process). Also some Apress fonts may be used, though I have attempted to replace these in the copy circulated here.

Finally, some Word comments indicate where discrepencies exist with the current F# release.

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Fantastic :-) It's really great to see that something like this is in development, and that's a great initial draft chapter. I'm looking forward to looking through the OOP one and indeed when the book is released next year. As has been said previously it should also help to make F# more accessible to those from outside the community.

By on 9/8/2006 4:56 AM ()

I'm sure this single piece of document is by far the most attractive one for any F# new comer. Thank you very much for sharing it, Don.

By on 9/7/2006 4:42 PM ()

I'm the ecstatic Apress editor of both books, and I'll get whatever information I can to the F# community as soon as possible. It takes months to get books into print, so please be patient.

Rob Pickering's Foundations of F# is scheduled for March 2007 publication, and Don Syme's Expert F# (coauthored by Adam Granicz and Antonio Cisternino) will be out no later than July 2007. I expect to formally announce Rob's book next week, when the cover is up on the Apress website and Amazon.com.

Both books are beautifully written for professionals. They're rich in concepts and techniques, exactly what's needed to use F# for real-world development.

They'll go a long, long way in bringing F# to the world, but in the meantime, all of us can help F# achieve much wider recognition.

Even very simple things can produce significant results. For example, once Rob's book is on Amazon, just visiting its page can gain it considerable recognition before publication, since Amazon counts clicks as well tracks sales. Likewise, just searching for the books and authors on Google can be beneficial. Emailing publishers to find out what and when they plan to publish on F# can also build buzz. And, in publishing, buzz isn't just a buzzword!

If there's enough of it, I might be able to get Don's book published sooner. :-)

I want to make these wonderful books a success, but even more, I want to see this truly marvelous language succeed.

More soon,

Jim

By on 9/7/2006 2:08 PM ()

Wow, I'm very glad to see that there are two books in production for F#! Is there a table of contents available somewhere? Am I right in assuming that this book will be for people in the industry rather than for academics? The only thing I don't like is that these books won't be out until 2007 :)

By on 9/7/2006 1:07 AM ()

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