3 min read
What Can You Do With F#?
Knowing what F# is used for makes it easier to stay motivated while learning the basics:
- Back-end services and APIs — web applications with Giraffe, Saturn, Falco, or plain ASP.NET Core, running on Linux or in the cloud.
- Finance and analytics — pricing models, risk calculations, and trading systems, where precise types and fast numeric code matter.
- Data processing — parsing files, transforming records, and building reports with pipelines; type providers give typed access to CSV, JSON, and SQL data.
- Scripting and automation — build scripts, deployment tasks, and
one-off data fixes as
.fsxfiles. - Web front ends — Fable compiles F# to JavaScript, so you can write browser apps (often with React) and share code with the server.
- Compilers and tools — parsers, code generators, and analyzers, where discriminated unions and pattern matching shine.
- Machine learning and science — ML.NET, notebooks (Polyglot Notebooks in VS Code), and numeric libraries.
You'll build smaller versions of several of these in the project lessons at the end of each level.