>> Hello and welcome to this series on F#.
We're covering concepts to help you get started
developing your own F# applications.
In this video, we're covering how to set up
your development environment to start writing F# code.
Let's get started. In order to get started developing with F#,
you'll need the .NET SDK.
The .NET SDK is set of libraries and tools that allow
developers to create .NET applications and libraries.
To download and install all the .NET SDK,
you're going to want to open up your browser and navigate
to .Net.Microsoft.com/download.
.Net is free across platform,
which means you get a zero cost and sought of Windows,
Linux, MacOS, and Docker.
Now in this PC, I'm using Windows,
so I'm going to want to select Windows.
At the time of this recording.
The latest stable version of .NET is
5.0 so that's the one we want to install.
Select ''Download .NET SDK" to download the installation files.
Now keep in mind that you want to get the .NET SDK,
and not the .NET run time.
Make sure you select download .NET SDK.
Once your files are downloaded,
begin the installation process.
When the installation is finished,
check to make sure that everything is installed correctly.
Only way you can do so is by opening up
the terminal and using the .NET CLI.
The .NET CLI is also part of
the SDK and it's a cross-platform tool for developing,
running and deploying .NET applications.
In the terminal, type .NET dash dash version
to check the version of .NET you have installed.
If everything is installed correctly,
you shall see the version of .NET you have
installed output to the console.
In this case, my version is 5.0.301.
Your ratio might be different, but that's okay.
As long as you can see the version,
it means everything is installed correctly.
Now that you have the .NET SDK installed,
you now want some way to edit your files.
Now although you can do that with any text editor,
Visual Studio Code,
is a lightweight and cross-platform text editor
that when paired with the Ionide extension,
where it takes your development environment
for F# to the next level.
Let's take a look at how you can download
and install Visual Studio Code.
To download and install Visual Studio Code,
open up your browser and navigate to
code.visualstudio.com/download,
like .NET, Visual Studio Code is free and
cross-platform so you can get at your zero cost,
and install on Windows, Linux or Mac.
In my case, because I have a Windows PC,
I'm going to want to ''Select'' Windows.
Now what this is going to do, it's just
like .NET it's going to download the installation files.
Once the installation files are downloaded,
I'm going to want to begin the installation process in
order to get Visual Studio Code installed on my PC.
Once Visual Studio Code is installed,
you want to install the Ionide F# extension.
To do so, open
Visual Studio Code and open up the extension's marketplace.
The extensions marketplace search for Ionide-fsharp.
From the list of results, you want to select Ionide-fsharp.
Once you see the install button here, you can select "Install."
What that's going to do is going to start installing the ionide
F# extension onto Visual Studio Code.
The Ionide F# extension
provides a lot of really neat features,
such as syntax highlighting,
automatic completions,
and the ability for you to work with F# interactive,
which we'll see in later videos.
Once you have the Ionide-fsharp extension installed,
you should be ready to start writing code.
If you're looking for something more than
just a text editor and perhaps you want an IDE,
you should consider looking at Visual Studio.
Now keep in mind though that Visual Studio is only
available for Windows and Mac.
If you're using Linux,
perhaps you better start by using
Visual Studio Code with the Ionide extension.
Let's take a look at how you can download
and install Visual Studio.
To get Visual Studio in the browser,
visit visualstudio.Microsoft.com/download.
Now there's multiple versions of Visual Studio.
But for our purposes,
the free community edition should work just fine.
Select the "Download Button"
to download and install Visual Studio.
We've looked at how you can use
something like Visual Studio Code to have
a lightweight text editing experience
as you develop your applications in F-Sharp.
If you want something a little bit more full fledged,
something like an IDE,
you can use something like Visual Studio.
Now another way that you can write
F-Sharp code is using interactive notebooks.
Perhaps you heard of Jupiter notebooks,
and this is something similar.
That's an experience that you're interested in.
You might want to check out .NET Interactive.
Let's take a look at how you can get .NET Interactive.
To get started with .NET Interactive,
you don't want go to github.com/.net/interactive.
Now in the repository,
there's information on how you can download and
install .NET Interactive onto your PC.
One of the easiest ways to get
started is also using Visual Studio Code.
By using the .NET Interactive notebooks extension,
which will allow you to have an interactive experience
for writing your F# code.
Now that you have your environments set up
its time to actually get started writing some code.
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