Introduction

This page contains all the information you need to start using F# outside this learning environment. The information here is mainly written for F# self-learners, students and academics. If you're a professional developer or if you're interested in using F# in commercial software, please visit Microsoft F# Developer Center.

Installing F#

F# running on the Mac

F# is a CLI language that works on CLI implementations including the Microsoft .NET Framework (on Windows, v2.0 and above), Mono (on Mac and various Linux distributions), Silverlight (in many web browser, and Windows Phone 7) and the Compact Framework (on XBox).

To develop F# programs, you can either use Visual Studio 2010 (on Windows) or MonoDevelop 2.4 (on Linux, Mac or Windows). The F# 2.0 compiler and core library are distributed as part of the Mono 2.10 package releasem and are also available as an open-source code drop under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can compile it from the source code if you prefer.

For more information about installing F# on various platforms, visit How to get F#?

Learning and Teaching F#

If you want to learn F#, please visit the Try F# Tutorials. In addition to these tutorials, you can find more detailed information in some of the F# books and online tutorials. If you prefer watching and listening, please see some of the recorded F# talks and screencasts.

Teaching materials

The tutorials on this web site are designed to give you an easy way to teach programming using F#. The benefit of using online tutorials is that students don't need to install any complex software package and can easily access tutorials from any machine. The Teaching F# page contains some additional useful links to existing course materials on F# as well as articles and presentations that may serve as additional inspiration for the classroom.

Research platform

F# can be also used as research platform. The open-source release can be modified and compiled on both .NET and Mono. In addition, the F# language integration for MonoDevelop can be easily adjusted to work with a modified version of the F# compiler. This way, you can get visual tooling for your language extension. For more information about research related to F# visit F# Research.

Facebook Twitter
Microsoft Research ©2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.      Contact Us | About Microsoft Research | Privacy | Terms of Use