Beginning F#: Card Tricks

hen attempting to learn a new computer language, it's difficult to find a problem that's both interesting enough to bother working with and also simple enough to let you concentrate on language rather than logic. Fortunately, it turns out you can learn a lot about F# with a deck of playing cards. This article shows how to create a simple F# application that shuffles a deck and displays the cards in the console window. Along the way you'll explore:

• Discriminated unions
• Tuples
• Lists and list sequence expressions
• Functions and recursion
• Pattern matching and functional polymorphism

What You Need

The minimum requirement for following along with the code is this article is Microsoft F# Interactive, delivered as part of the Microsoft F# download package available on MSDN. F# Interactive runs in a console window and compiles and runs F# commands interactively. However, the recommended setup is Visual Studio 2008 (or later) with Microsoft F# installed. If you don't have the full version of Visual Studio 2008, you can install the free Visual Studio 2008 Shell (Integrated Mode). After installing the Visual Studio Shell, install Microsoft F#.

Getting Started
Visual Studio gives you the option to create F# applications and class libraries, and has an integrated window running F# Interactive. F# will eventually be available as a standalone Visual Studio Express Edition product.