What is F# written in?
What F# is used for
F# is a functional-first language on .NET, used for data processing, finance, and analytics where its concise syntax and strong types reduce bugs.
Notable use: quantitative finance, data pipelines, and analytics teams on the .NET platform.
Quick Facts
- Designed by
- Don Syme and Microsoft Research
- Developer
- Microsoft and F Sharp Software Foundation
- First released
- 2005
- Typing
- static
- License
- Apache License
- Filename extension
- .fs, .fsi, .fsx, .fsscript
- Website
- fsharp.org
About F#
F# is a Microsoft programming language. It is a statically typed and garbage-collected language that compiles to bytecode that runs on a virtual machine. It supports functional, object-oriented, and imperative programming. Compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine is the same model the JVM and .NET use: the VM, not the CPU, interprets or JIT-compiles the bytecode.
F# first appeared in 2005 and was designed by Don Syme and Microsoft Research at Microsoft. F# keeps a steady, moderate following today.
How F# is implemented
In the Language Lineage dataset, F# is self-hosting, so its own compiler is written in F# itself and its toolchain was bootstrapped from OCaml. Reaching self-hosting, where a language is mature enough to compile itself, is a milestone that proves the language can handle a large, real-world program.
F# in the language family tree
F# drew on ideas from ML, OCaml, and Haskell and went on to influence Q#.
Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata · Official site
Frequently Asked Questions
Evidence Sources
- https://fsharp.org/history/hopl-final/hopl-fsharp.pdf
- https://github.com/dotnet/fsharp
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_Sharp
- F# on Wikipedia
- F# on Wikidata (Q648619)