Introduction to F#

If you're like most .NET developers, you've maybe heard (or maybe not) about this new language Microsoft is shipping in Visual Studio 2010, called Visual F#. F# represents Microsoft's entry into the functional programming world, and for many .NET developers it represents both an opportunity and a challenge. Opportunity, in that functional programming can make a whole range of tasks much, much easier; challenging, in that functional programming represents an entirely new way of looking at designing and writing .NET code. In this presentation, we take an all-code, no-slides look at the language, its concepts and ideas, and a little bit of its libraries and syntax, to show you how to start answering that crucial question. By the end of the talk, you will have a grasp of some of the core F# syntax, some good background on how it works and what it's good for, a little bit of how it interoperates with C#, Visual Basic and other .NET languages, in either Web and desktop applications--and most of all, what kind of investment does learning F# represent to the busy .NET developer.