Question

I’m learning F# and I would like to find some medium size opensource project written in idiomatic F# for further learning.
Can ayone recommend some project?
Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

I don’t think there is a single good idiomatic open-source project to look at, but here is a couple of links. First of all, there is a number of things from F# itself that are worth exploring:

• The F# compiler and core libraries are open-source and worth checking out. The compiler is quite difficult, but some of the libraries are good example of nice F# code.
• The F# PowerPack is also open-source and implements some interesting types (like matrix, vector and some immutable collections)

Some very nice (commented!) and reasonably sized F# projects include:

• Cellz – an Excel-like spreadsheet application written using Silverlight. It has parser for simple expressions and nice evaluation engine that handles dependencies between cells.

• TickSpeck – a framework for behaviour driven development (BDD) written in F#
  (If you’re interested in development methodologies, then this might interest you)

• F# binding for MonoDevelop – is a well commented (I believe :-)) but reasonably small project that implements F# binding for MD. It uses MailboxProcessor (aka “agents”) in an interesting way.

• Antoher big F# open-source project is FSharpX – a package of various F# libraries – however I would not recommend it as idiomatic F# code. It takes lot of ideas and some syntax from Haskell, which is not really idiomatic in F#, but it contains many interesting and useful parts.

Aside from projects, if you want to learn how to write idiomatic F# code, then there is an excellent F# Component Design Guidelines document from the F# team.