F# developed as a research programming language to provide the much
sought-after combination of type safety, succinctness, performance,
expresivity and scripting, with all the advantages of running on a
high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system. This combination has
been so successful that the language is now being transitioned towards a
fully supported language on the .NET platform.

F# was developed as a pragmatically-oriented variant of ML that shares a
core language with OCaml.  Unlike other scripting languages it executes
at or near the speed of C# and C++, making use of the performance that
comes through strong typing. Unlike many type-inferred, statically-typed
languages it also supports many dynamic language techniques, such as
property discovery and reflection where needed. F# includes extensions
for working across languages and for object-oriented programming, and it
works seamlessly with other .NET programming languages and tools.

WWW: http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx
