F# Code Made Open Source Project

The Nov. 2010 release to open source of source code for F# enhances developers’ access to Microsoft’s functional programming language, which gives developers tools for parallel programming and mathematical operations. Although Microsoft Research previously offered F# compiler and tools for free download, the company did not support it as a product until its inclusion in Visual Studio 2010. F# code for the compiler, library, and tools is now a CodePlex project, Microsoft’s hosting platform for open source projects so that developers can submit code (for example, tools to use with the language). Microsoft retains control of the F# language specification itself.

F#: Language for Parallel Programming

F# is a new .NET programming language developed by Microsoft Research, and it is designed as a hybrid of traditional programming languages and functional programming languages. The latter are particularly well suited for parallel computing and mathematical operations. F# is distributed as a fully supported language in the .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2010.