Summary

To summarize, F# provides the combined benefits of succinct syntax, immutable types, interoperability, efficiency, concurrency, and scalability— an impressive list. Functional programming has a well established repertoire as an efficient way of modeling complex problems in its respective mathematical form. F#, as a modern multi-paradigm language, is quite practical for enterprises, and gives developers and software architects an excellent reason to start using functional programming in their projects.

We recommend reading Functional thinking: Why functional programming is on the rise, by Neal Ford, who is a software architect at ThoughtWorks, at www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-ft20/ as a follow up reading to reinforce some of the concepts discussed in this chapter.

In this chapter, we have covered an introduction to functional programming paradigm along with some key syntactical elements of the F# programming language. We have established the notion of thinking in functional style and explained why functional programming matters? We also elaborated on the benefits of functional programming and functional data structures along with code based comparisons of imperative and functional paradigms.

In the next chapter, we will gain further knowledge about the F# tooling, syntax, and semantics of the language and learn to write some programs using F#.