While inspired by OCaml, F# isn't just another functional programming language. Drawing on many of the strengths of both OCaml and .NET, it's a general-purpose language ideal for real-world development. F# integrates functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming styles so you can flexibly and elegantly solve programming problems, and brings .NET development alive with interactive execution. Whatever your background, you'll find that F# is easy to learn, fun to use, and extraordinarily powerful. F# will help change the way you think about and go about programming.

F# is a programming language that provides the much sought-after combination of type safety, performance and scripting, with all the advantages of running on a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system. F# gives you a combination of

• interactive scripting like Python,
• the foundations for an interactive data visualization environment like MATLAB,
• the strong type inference and safety of ML,
• a cross-compiling compatible core shared with the popular OCaml language,
• a performance profile like that of C#,
• easy access to the entire range of powerful .NET libraries and database tools,
• a foundational simplicity with similar roots to Scheme,
• the option of a top-rate Visual Studio integration,
• the experience of a first-class team of language researchers with a track record of delivering high-quality implementations,
• the speed of native code execution on the concurrent, portable, and distributed .NET Framework.

The only language to provide a combination like this is F# (pronounced FSharp) - a scripted/functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language that is a fantastic basis for many practical scientific, engineering and web-based programming tasks. 

F# is a pragmatically-oriented variant of ML that shares a core language with OCaml. F# programs run on top of the .NET Framework. Unlike other scripting languages it executes at or near the speed of C# and C++, making use of the performance that comes through strong typing. Unlike many statically-typed languages it also supports many dynamic language techniques, such as property discovery and reflection where needed. F# includes extensions for working across languages and for object-oriented programming, and it works seamlessly with other .NET programming languages and tools.