Hi

I've been in software development for a long time now (since 1983, makes me feel old). But I've been firmly in the C++/Java/C# world for doing business applications since around 1990. I'm now on my first F# project for a few weeks and have been duly impressed with several aspects of F#. But one thing I really find myself struggling with is large scale program design.

I'm quite aware that I can continue using OO analysis and design techniques when building with F#. But I'm trying to fully embrace the whole FP paradigm here. And the one thing I haven't been able make sense of is the operational/structural organization of my F# software components. Heck even the idea of a true software component in my current understanding of FP is rather opaque. From what I've been reading the FP world kinda shuns objects and promotes data structures without permanently attached logic. So far this just isn't sitting well with me. I can kinda appreciate the way that in FP interfaces and inheritance just aren't really necessary anymore. But the lack of encapsulation and the potentially haphazard relationship between the data structures and the logic that is to work with them seems like a recipe for problems as software projects grow physically larger and more complex.

So I'm left wondering whether or not you FP guys think in terms of software components? And if not how are you designing your programs so that data structures and their functions can be reasoned about and evolve over time as the project matures from the development of simpler low-level infrastructural bits of functionality through their compositions into higher order modules and eventually something akin to the sub-systems of a full fledged application?

If there are any web links or books that you can point out that address these issues that would be great. Maybe if you know of something that is the FP equivalent of Grady Booch's "Object Oriented Analysis & Design with Applications". I'm not interested in the UML stuff or even anything that involves the nuts and bolts of F#. I already have Syme's and Thomas P's books but they aren't really discussing these larger software development issues that I'm talking about here.

Thanks, Derek