I've been holding off buying Expert F# as I think it was published a couple of years ago and there have been some changes to the language since then. I would be grateful for any advice on whether or not it is worth waiting for a new edition.

Thank you

A lot has changed since the first books (Expert F#, Foundations of F# and F# for Scientists) were written. Little of the old code still works and many of the techniques have been removed or altered for the product release. For example, sequence expressions are completely different, asynchronous workflows are different, even type inference works completely differently in ways that affect how you must write code in order to get it to compile.

My new book F# for Technical Computing is currently the only book to cover the current (May 2009 CTP) version of F#. Don Syme is writing a new book "The Definitive Guide to F#" and Robert Pickering is writing a second edition of "Foundations of F#" to cover these extensive changes but these are not likely to be published for months. There is also Chris Smith's new book Programming F# which is about to be published but I have no idea how up-to-date the content is.

Cheers,
Jon Harrop.

Hi there,

Expert F# is still a good read, even with some of the language changes that have happened. Sure, there will be things mentioned that aren't true anymore, but I wouldn't recommend buying a book just to learn syntax anyways. You'll learn a lot about using and thinking with the language, and that really hasn't changed much.

However, it does appear a new book is coming out, so the decision of it being "worth it" depends on your own budget. There are other books out there, some quite a bit less money than Expert F# or The Definitive Guide to F#.

-Michael