contents

foreword
preface
acknowledgments
about this book
about the cover illustration

Part 1 Learning to think functionally

1 Thinking differently: 1.1 What is functional programming?; 1.2 The path to real-world functional programming; 1.3 Being productive with functional programming; 1.4 Functional programming by example; 1.5 Introducing F#; 1.6 Summary
2 Core concepts in functional programming: 2.1 The foundation of functional programming; 2.2 Evaluation of functional programs; 2.3 Writing declarative code; 2.4 Functional types and values; 2.5 Summary
3 Meet tuples, lists, and functions in F# and C#: 3.1 Value and function declarations; 3.2 Using immutable data structures; 3.3 Lists and recursion; 3.4 Using functions as values; 3.5 Summary
4 Exploring F# and .NET libraries by example: 4.1 Drawing pie charts in F#; 4.2 Writing and testing code in FSI; 4.3 Creating a console application; 4.4 Creating a Windows Forms application; 4.5 Summary

Part 2 Fundamental functional techniques

5 Using functional values locally: 5.1 What are values?; 5.2 Multiple values; 5.3 Alternative values; 5.4 Generic values; 5.5 Function values; 5.6 Summary
6 Processing values using higher-order functions: 6.1 Generic higher-order functions; 6.2 Working with tuples; 6.3 Working with schedules; 6.4 Working with the option type; 6.5 Working with functions; 6.6 Type inference; 6.7 Working with lists; 6.8 Common processing language; 6.9 Summary
7 Designing data-centric programs: 7.1 Functional data structures; 7.2 Flat document representation; 7.3 Structured document representation; 7.4 Writing operations; 7.5 Object-oriented representations; 7.6 Summary
8 Designing behavior-centric programs: 8.1 Using collections of behaviors; 8.2 Idioms for working with functions; 8.3 Working with composed behaviors; 8.4 Combining data and behaviors; 8.5 Summary

9 Turning values into F# object types with members: 9.1 Improving data-centric applications; 9.2 Improving behavior-centric applications; 9.3 Working with .NET interfaces; 9.4 Concrete object types; 9.5 Using F# libraries from C#; 9.6 Summary
10 Efficiency of data structures: 10.1 Optimizing functions; 10.2 Working with large collections; 10.3 Introducing continuations; 10.4 Summary
11 Refactoring and testing functional programs: 11.1 Refactoring functional programs; 11.2 Testing functional code; 11.3 Refactoring the evaluation order; 11.4 Using lazy values in practice; 11.5 Summary
12 Sequence expressions and alternative workflows: 12.1 Generating sequences; 12.2 Mastering sequence expressions; 12.3 Processing sequences; 12.4 Introducing alternative workflows; 12.5 First steps in custom computations; 12.6 Implementing computation expressions for options; 12.7 Augmenting computations with logging; 12.8 Summary

13 Asynchronous and data-driven programming: 13.1 Asynchronous workflows; 13.2 Connecting to the World Bank; 13.3 Exploring and obtaining the data; 13.4 Gathering information from the data; 13.5 Visualizing data using Excel; 13.6 Summary
14 Writing parallel functional programs: 14.1 Understanding different parallelization techniques; 14.2 Running graphical effects in parallel; 14.3 Creating a parallel simulation; 14.4 Summary
15 Creating composable functional libraries: 15.1 Approaches for composable design; 15.2 Creating animated values; 15.3 Writing computations with behaviors; 15.4 Working with drawings; 15.5 Creating animations; 15.6 Developing financial modeling language; 15.7 Summary
16 Developing reactive functional programs: 16.1 Reactive programming using events; 16.2 Creating reactive animations; 16.3 Programming UIs using workflows; 16.4 Storing state in reactive applications; 16.5 Message passing concurrency; 16.6 Summary