My F# Journey – What I’ve learned so far

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This is a first blog post in a series to document my experiences while learning functional programming. This is my F# Journey. During my 15 year career that started in the late 90’s, I have not made very many conscious decisions about learning a specific language or technology.  The path I’ve taken and the experience I’ve gained seems like it just happened naturally. As someone always wanting to learn, I usually find some interesting topics and start going down the rabbit hole (Domain Driven Design, CQRS, Event Sourcing… thanks Greg Young), however I never usually set out on a “I’m going to learn X” journey. That’s about to change. As with anyone that keeps up with the latest trends, functional programming is all the rage.  And I do believe for good reason (more on that later),  which is why I’ve decided to take on the journey of learning with F#.   I’ve chosen F# because of my .NET/C# background and feel it can help my career to keep it in the .NET ecosystem.

What I’ve learned so far…

Stop comparing it to C#

It’s natural when looking at another imperative language that you are unfamiliar with, to compare it to the language you know best.   The concepts are all transferable.  How do I perform a loop?  How do I define a variable?  How do I assign a variable? With a quick search and reading a few examples,  you are off to the races writing some basic code in a new imperative language.  Stop trying to compare concepts. Let it go! Open up your mind to new ideas and try and forget everything you know. Think like a beginner.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

Because F# is a hybrid language and supports some of the concepts of an imperative language, doesn’t mean you should use them.  In pure functional languages, there are no loops or objects. Let it go! Just because you can use F# in a non-functional way, doesn’t mean you should (especially while learning). When reading intro articles, you will see the following statements over and over again: “start thinking functionally” or “start thinking differently”.  It’s hard at first to really grasp what this really means.  Once you finally let go of the imperative way of thinking, you will get an “AH HA!” moment.

Read & Play

Anytime I’ve ever learned a new language it has always been through practical use in a small app.  However, I do find that learning the basics of F#, understanding F# types, and thinking like a beginner before jumping into real code has been helpful.  I’m using Visual Studio and writing code, but more as a playground than attempting actually write an app.  Once I feel comfortable enough and actually feel like I fully “get it”, I’m going to start writing a simple app.