Slipped into the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio release is F# for Silverlight 4. While C# or VB is still recommended for UI design, F# offers some interesting capabilities for the business tier, especially if it is heavy on computations or data processing logic.
The F# also has a PowerPack that brings in functionality that either is not ready or is not appropriate for the core release. This release doesn’t add new functionality but does allow the library to be used from Silverlight 3 and 4.
Features that can be found in the F# PowerPack include:
- F#’s take on Lex and Yacc, including MSBuild support
- SI unit of measure
- Tagged immutable sets and maps
- Matrix library and supporting math types
The F# PowerPack is available on CodePlex under the Microsoft Public License. In order to make developing pure F# applications easier with Silverlight, DmitryLomov has created a F# Silverlight Application template.