Build Stuff'14

Many standard F# libraries and tools, including the compiler itself, are developed as open-source and have a large number of contributors. To successfully build such projects, you need to be serious about your craft. This includes comprehensive testing, using automated build tools, continuous integration, as well as creating great documentation and tutorials. In this talk, I'll talk about what I learned as an open-source F# contributor.

Along the way, we'll look a number of risk-free ways of introducing F# into your workflow:

* How to use F# Interactive for explorative programming and writing code that works on the first try
* Using FAKE - an F# build tool - to automate everything in your build process
* Writing readable unit tests with F# and using FsCheck for property-based testing
* Generating great documentation using F# Formatting tools

In summary, this talk is a walkthrough covering some of the software engineering aspects of programming that have been working extremely well for the F# open-source ecosystem. After the talk, you'll have a good idea how to use some of the techniques in your daily job - but you may as well become an F# contributor! 

The talk is for anyone who is serious about their work as software developer - the talk is mainly about open-source and F#, but you'll benefit even if you're building closed-source projects or using other languages.

You should also come if you're interested in introducing F# into your workflow as a .NET developer, because using F# for additional tooling is one of the easiest ways of getting started.