I think there are several reasons why F# has grown so quickly in popularity. The functional paradigm is particularly well-suited for parallel programming and data science, both of which have seen tremendous growth lately.
F# is both open sources and backed by a heavyweight software company. This may be attractive to corporate technologists. I have to wonder if geography has a hand as well. With F# originating from the UK, and with London being probably the most significant centre of finance in the world, it is not surprising that the banking/finance sector has been an early adopter.
A few highlights about F#
- F# now is 13th most popular language on TIOBE. It is buried R which is at #33.
- F# also has a double-up chevron which means it is gaining fast.
F# is a functional programming language that allows you to write simple code for complex problems. Currently, it is most commonly used in the financial sector. Quantitative finance makes heavy use of mathematics to model various parts of finance in the real world. If you are interested in using F# for your day-to-day work or research in quantitative finance, this book is a must-have.
This book will cover everything you need to know about using functional programming for quantitative finance. Using a functional programming language will enable you to concentrate more on the problem itself rather than implementation details. Tutorials and snippets are summarized into an automated trading system throughout the book.
This book will introduce you to F#, using Visual Studio, and provide examples with functional programming and finance combined. The book also covers topics such as downloading, visualizing and calculating statistics from data.
F# is a first-class programming language for the financial domain.
Approach
The approach is to guide you as a reader from the basics of functional programming and F# to more complex tasks using tutorials and a lot of code examples. As you gain more confidence throughout the book, you will be able to modify and write your own code to solve various problems in finance.
Who this book is for
If you are a practitioner of quantitative finance, economics, or mathematics and wish to learn F#, then this book is for you. You may have a basic conceptual understanding of financial concepts and models, but no previous knowledge is expected.
