F#: ML for .NET

By Martin Heller

August 11, 2003

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Despite its status as a relatively small Microsoft research project, F# is an interesting demonstration of what can be done to implement a mixed functional/imperative programming language for the .NET framework.

I'm truly amazed at how distortion spreads on the Internet, although I should really know better by now. In late January of this year Mary Jo Foley noticed the F# (eff sharp) language distribution on the Microsoft Research site, and posted a short, fairly balanced report on her Web site, Microsoft Watch.

Several months after Foley's report, Slashdot reported: "Neonerds.net has learned of an implementation of the ML programming language for the .NET Framework. F# is essentially an implementation of the core of the OCaml programming language." This report itself wasn't terribly distorted, but the denizens of Slashdot took it as a jumping-off point to generate numerous conspiracy theories and rude comments.

Robyn Peterson of ExtremeTech wrote more of an in-depth report on F# at the end of May. Peterson is somewhat excited about F#, and it shows—but the reactions on his site start with "F#? This is a joke, isn't it?"

It was about this time that I started getting questions about F#. As soon as I'd looked into it and had seen that it was based on a dialect of ML, I suspected that it was mainly of academic interest. After all, Standard ML goes back to 1984, and even then it was an attempt at MIT to unify the various older dialects of ML. Interestingly, Common LISP tried to unify the dialects of LISP at about the same time and place: Maybe it was something in the water.

Despite its vintage, you mostly encounter ML in programming courses or in research efforts.

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