README.md

Course: Introduction to functional programming in F#

University of Dunaújváros, Hungary

Instructor

• Adam Granicz (GitHub:granicz, Twitter:@granicz), IntelliFactory

Course and study material

• F# language reference
• Tour of F#
• Syme, D., Granicz. A., Cisternino A. (2017). Expert F# 4.0. 4th Edition. Apress. ISBN 978-1-4842-0741-3.
• Setting up your F# environment
  • Installation
    • Visual Studio Code
    • Visual Studio
  • F# with .NET CLI
• Formats and tools
  • Mastering Markdown
  • Version control in general
    • git learning resources
    • git handbook
• Web programming
  • The WebSharper documentation

Evaluation

• Ways to earn a grade:
  • Homework (3x) - 100 points
  • Project work (1+1) - 150 points
  • Extra credit
• Grade 5 - 225+ points
• Grade 4 - 200+ points
• Grade 3 - 175+ points
• Grade 2 - 150+ points
• Fail - below 150 points

Assignments

• Assignment #1 - (30 points, due date: Apr 10, 2022).
  • Numbers, sequences/lists, mapping/filtering/folding, records, discriminated unions, functions/recursion
• Assignment #2 - (30 points) - TBD
• Assignment #3 - (40 points) - TBD

Project work

During the course of the semester, you will work on and complete two larger projects.

1. Mid-term project (50 points, due date: Apr 24, 2022). A web project meant to help you dig deeper into web programming with F#. You can implement more than one project to earn extra credit.

2. Personal project (100 points, due date: last Sunday of the semester) - this is a project you can pick for youself, and it is meant to help you explore F# more fully at your own pace and according to your own interest.

Course schedule

• Feb 18, 2022 (in-class)

  • Chapter 2, Chapter 3 - Functional programming
    • Your first F# program - analyzing a string for duplicate words
    • Using F# Interactive (FSI/fsi)
    • Bindings - using let, left-hand-side (LHS) is a pattern
    • Values and immutability
    • Types and signatures
    • Type inference and type annotations
    • Functions calls
    • Scope
    • Dot-notation
    • Tuples
    • Values and objects
    • Opening namespaces and modules - open
    • Values, methods, properties
    • MSDN - F# reference
      • Basic types
      • Unit type
      • Tuples
      • Records
      • Options
      • Values, immutability
      • Type inference and automatic generalization

• Feb 25, 2022 (in-class)

  • Expert F# 4 - Chapter 3 - Functional programming
    • Basic types and their literals (bool, int, float, double, string, unit)
    • Arithmetic operators, using type annotations to drive overload selection
    • Converting values
    • Basic comparison (=, <>, <, <=, >, >=, min, max)
    • Strings and their characters
    • Conditionals
    • Recursive functions
    • Lists, Arrays
    • Options
    • Pattern matching
    • Function values, function composition, first-class functions
    • MSDN - F# reference
      • Discriminated unions
      • Active patterns
      • Namespaces, nested namespaces
      • Modules, nested modules
      • Functions, anonymous functions, currying, higher-order functions
        • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/functions/,
        • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/functions/lambda-expressions-the-fun-keyword
        • Recurive, and mutually recursive functions - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/functions/recursive-functions-the-rec-keyword

• Mar 4, 2022 - cancelled

• Mar 11, 2022 (online) - video

  • Chapter 4 - Imperative programming
    • Mutable records
    • Mutable let-bindings
    • Reference cells
    • Arrays, slicing
    • .NET collections - lazy vs eager
    • Sequences
    • Chapter 5
      • Exploring some simple type definitions
      • Understanding generics
      • Making things generic
      • Reference and value types
    • MSDN - F# reference
      • Copy and update record expressions
      • Arrays
      • Exception handling
      • F# collection types
      • Sequences
      • Slices

• Mar 18, 2022 (online) - video

  • WebSharper basics, project templates, getting started
    • Installation
    • Sitelets, requests, content

• Mar 25, 2022 - video

• Apr 1, 2022 (online) - video

  • Reactive programming with WebSharper.UI
    • Reactive variables and ListModels
    • Two-way binding of UI controls and models
    • React vs WebSharper.UI
      • Virtual DOM, DOM diffing vs dynamic dataflow

• Apr 8, 2022 (online) - video

  • Working with databases (MS SQL Server)
    • MS SQL Server
    • MS SQL Server Management Studio
      • Creating databases
      • Creating tables
      • Primary keys - GUID vs auto-incremented int, uniqueness constraint
      • Foreign keys - foreign key (FK) constraint
  • Overview of F# data access
    • Key considerations
      • .NET Core/net50+ support
      • Object-Relational-Mapping (ORM) capabilities
      • Queries as F# (computation expressions) vs SQL
      • Type-safety vs performance
    • Accessing SQL Server - comparison, old but useful
    • Key choices
      • FSharp.Data.SqlClient
      • SQLProvider - issues with net50+
      • Dapper.FSharp
      • DustyTables

• Apr 13, 2022 - Possible extra day, TBD

• Apr 15, 2022 - Holiday

• Apr 22, 2022

• Apr 29, 2022

• May 6, 2022