(From the 1/28/03 issue of Microsoft Watch)

F# is a programming language developed by Microsoft Research's Cambridge, U.K., team — in particular, a researcher named Don Syme.

Microsoft's F# FAQ

More on Don Syme

"F# is an implementation of the core of the CAML programming language for the .NET Framework, along with cross-language extensions. The aim is to have it work together seamlessly with C#, Visual Basic, SML.NET and other .NET programming languages," according to the Microsoft Research site.

F# is meant to bridge the best of the functional, imperative, object-oriented and typed-classed languages, the F# site says. It will be more like CAML, with " a smaller number of simple, orthogonal constructs which work together to allow for succinct yet efficient solutions to programming problems," the site continues.

CAML, a language developed and distributed by INRIA (the main French research institute for computer science), is freely available for Unix, PC or Macintosh.

What Is CAML?

Microsoft Research seems serious about F#. It released an updated F# compiler in December. That doesn't mean Microsoft plans to productize F# any time soon. But it does make us curious as to what the relationship — if any — will be between F# and X#, Microsoft's forthcoming XML programming language.

Read "X# On Tap"

We asked Microsoft for comment on F#. The company didn't respond by the time we went to press.