F# - even the longest journey begins with a single step. And there may be bumps along the way

Don't take me wrong. I have just started familiarizing myself with F# - a fairly new functional programming language developed with heavy involvement of Microsoft.

My intention has been to examine, whether F# can be used for various tasks I usually perform with R (http://www.r-project.org/).

As for now, F# looks pretty strange.

It is different in many ways from standard programming languages like C/C+. It is also different from R.

Learning it seems like solving a series of logic puzzles, at this stage.

My (very early) F# code is definitely not optimal, but it may give a hint of what may come later.

Take for example a simple function for calculating return on investment in a bond, used in my previous post.

In R, the function looks like that:

1. # expected (discounted) return
2. pv <- function(fa,n,cr,rf) {
4.   -fa+sum(sapply(1:n, function(i) (fa*cr)/(1+rf)^i))+fa/(1+rf)^n
6. }

You can see the code in context here: http://pastebin.com/bFEHQQnM

Meanwhile, my F# equivalent is:

At least both functions return the same result :)

The nice thing about F# is that, although Microsoft did not include it in the free Visual Studio Express 2013, there is an online version of the F# available. You can write and test your F# code there.

OK, why F# may look strange? Just a couple of observations:

• calculating power for floats and integers is handled differently - pown for integers and ** for floats
• once a function is used with one type of argument - say int - you cannot use it again with any other type - say float
• separate operations for adding a single element at the beginning of a list (::) and for joining the lists (@)

• some symbol combinations (example: !!!), while it is possible to define the operations they perform, cannot be used between arguments, i.e. !!! 2 3 is fine, while 2 !!! 3 is not

I would like to stress again, that I am at the very beginning of my journey with F#. 

The peculiarities of F# have not discouraged me so far. I'd say, it is quite the opposite. They have increased my hunger for learning fore about this bizarre creature ;)