F#: is it OK for developing theorem provers?

Question

Please advise. I am a lawyer, I work in the field of Law Informatics. I have been a programmer for a long time (Basic, RPG, Fortran, Pascal, Cobol, VB.NET, C#). I am currently i

Answer 1

First, the project you describe sounds (and I believe this is the correct legal term) totally freaking awesome.

Second, while F# is a good choice for math applications, its also extremely well-suited for any applications which perform a lot of symbolic processing. Its worth noting that F# is part of the ML family of languages which were originally designed for the specific purpose of developing theorem provers. It sounds like you're writing an application which appeals directly to the niche ML languages are geared for.

I would personally recommend writing any theorem proving applications you have in F# rather than C# -- only because the resulting F# code will be about 1/10th the size of the C# equivalent. I posted this sample demonstrating how to evaluate propositional logic in C# and F#, you can see the difference for yourself.