F# is only kind of new...
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F# is definitely a new language. But it has some roots that go back pretty far. |
Although F# is new, it's based very closely on a language called OCaml. OCaml was invented in 1996 -- 12 years ago. And OCaml, added object-oriented capabilities to a previous language called Caml, which came out in 1985 -- 23 years ago. And Caml, in turn, was heavily inspired by an even older language called ML. ML was developed in 1973.
And so F# is considered by many people to be a dialect of the old ML language.
ML itself has an interesting history, and if you're interested in learning F#, you can probably benefit by understanding the history of ML and how it demonstrated functional programming techniques. Although people are critical of Wikipedia, it actually has a pretty good writeup about ML here. Also, check out the entries on functional languages and purely-functional languages. (F# isn't considered a purely-functional language, but reading this will help you understand what's meant by functional language.)
