Enterprise Applications: Microsoft's F#: 10 Reasons Why It's a Hot Programming Language for Developers
Email
Print
F# is a strongly typed, functional-first programming language for writing simple code to solve complex problems. From the business perspective, the primary role of F#, pronounced F sharp, is to reduce the time-to-deployment for analytical software components in the modern enterprise. For example, F# makes it straightforward to tackle the complexity of components such as calculation engines and data-rich analytical services, while facilitating the construction of correct, robust and efficient software. Together, these give concrete business advantages through the rapid investigation of problem spaces and the seamless, nonintrusive deployment of the resulting components. One key to this is F#'s interoperability with all .NET languages and libraries, which also provides developers with an incremental path for adopting F#. F# 2.0 is both open source and shipped as part of Visual Studio 2010. A preview of F# 3.0 is currently available in Visual Studio 11 Beta. The F# language originated in Microsoft Research and has been available since 2007. In the past five years, F# has continued to grow in popularity, and Microsoft has detailed how the language has helped solved complex programming problems in industries as diverse as banking, insurance and energy. Following an expert talk on the use of F# at Microsoft's recent Lang.NEXT 2012 conference, Donna Malayeri, Microsoft's program manager for F# came up with 10 reasons developers should look at F# for certain projects. Here, eWEEK shares Malayeri's Top 10 list and shows why developers should check out F#.
