10 Tips for Productive F# Scripting

The post gathers practical tips for working with F# scripts. It favors editing code in .fsx files, running blocks interactively in FSI, and using shortcuts to test and reuse code while keeping scripts clean.

It also covers command-line execution, relative paths, loading assemblies and files, package management with Paket, profiling with #time, and a few extra tricks for working with large datasets and the FSI environment.

Reading notes

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• Use .fsx files for interactive coding because they offer a richer environment and encourage reusable scripts.
• In FSI, evaluated expressions produce values such as it, and you can keep using those values until they are shadowed.
• Scripts can run from the command line with FSI.exe, and behavior can differ between interactive and non-interactive execution.
• Relative paths are safer than absolute paths when a script depends on nearby resources, and SOURCE_DIRECTORY helps locate them.
• Assemblies can be loaded with #r, including packages such as FSharp.Data or .NET assemblies not referenced by default.
• Paket avoids version-numbered package paths, which makes script references less brittle when package versions change.
• #load lets a script include code from another file, as long as any missing dependencies are referenced first.
• #time enables timing and garbage-collection information for code executed in FSI, and can be toggled on or off.
• Turning FSI to 64-bit is suggested for handling large datasets.
• The post also mentions extra tools and tricks such as debugging scripts, FsEye, font-size changes, pretty-printers, and Visual F# Power Tools.