Check out the latest XPO video on how to use XPO from F#.
F# is the new first class language in Visual Studio 2010, it brings you type safe, succinct, efficient and expressive functional programming language on the .NET platform. It is a simple and pragmatic language, and has particular strengths in data-oriented programming, parallel I/O programming, parallel CPU programming, scripting and algorithmic development. It lets you access a huge .NET library and tools base and comes with a strong set of Visual Studio development tools. F# combines the advantages of typed functional programming with a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system.
So what is functional programming? Well it’s a paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. In a functional language, applications are built by composing functions, unlike Object Orientated languages where applications are built by composing objects. This functional style helps the programmer to build robust applications as the base unit of construction is finer grained and is, therefore, less prone to error.
Other examples of functional programming languages are: Erlang, Scala, Lisp, and Clojure.