Real-World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C

Functional programming languages like F#, Erlang, and Scala are attractingattention as an efficient way to handle the new requirements for programmingmulti-processor and high-availability applications. Microsoft's new F# is a truefunctional language and C# uses functional language features for LINQ andother recent advances.

Real-World Functional Programming is a unique tutorial that explores thefunctional programming model through the F# and C# languages. The clearlypresented ideas and examples teach readers how functional programming differsfrom other approaches. It explains how ideas look in F#-a functionallanguage-as well as how they can be successfully used to solve programmingproblems in C#. Readers build on what they know about .NET and learn wherea functional approach makes the most sense and how to apply it effectively inthose cases.

The reader should have a good working knowledge of C#. No prior exposure toF# or functional programming is required.

Tomas Petricek discovered functional programming as a graduate student at Charles University in Prague. He has been a Microsoft C# MVP since 2004 and is one of the most active members in the F# community. In addition to his work with F#, he has been using C# 3.0 in a functional way since the early previews in 2005. He interned with the F# team at Microsoft Research, and he has developed a client/server web framework for F# called F# WebTools. His articles on functional programming in .NET and various other topics can be found at his web site tomasp.net.

Jon Skeetis a Senior Software Engineer at Google, working in London. He has been involved in the C# community since 2002, initially in newsgroups, then through his blog, user groups, international conferences and the Stack Overflow Q&A site. Jon enjoys putting the language through its paces, finding new and interesting ways to use and abuse it.