I really need to spend some time with F#

06. Aug, 2006 6 Comments

Don Syme gave us a demonstration of F# at Lang .Net last week. Don also created generics for the CLR, which reinforced my status as the dumbest guy in the room last week :)

There were a lot of really cool things in the demo, from the SQL Analyzer style ‘select some code and run it via CTRL-E’ to using |> as an operator string objects together using a pipeline metaphor.

He also mentioned that the Microsoft Driver Verifier is written in OCaml, but is being ported to F#.

It was really awesome to see functional and object-oriented programming styles mixed together so beautifully in the same programming language. I really need an excuse to write something in a functional language in the future.

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6 Responses to “I really need to spend some time with F#”

  1. Jason Bock 07. Aug, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    YOU were the dumbest guy in the room? Oh, please…I felt like a moron at times!

  2. lb 09. Aug, 2006 at 1:02 am

    re: ‘SQL Analyzer style ???select some code and run it via CTRL-E???’
    is this an F# capability? I was thinkin recently about writing a Visual Studio add-in to enable this (in C# at least).
    damn F#! I’ve download every release of that thing, but i still haven’t gotten around to playing with it, not once. ;-)

  3. John Lam 09. Aug, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    Yes – Don’s demo was entirely driven by selecting chunks of code out of a file and hitting some magic key combination (I’m guessing CTRL-E).

  4. Don Syme 12. Aug, 2006 at 8:55 pm

    Thanks for the coverage! I’m looking forward to the next Lang.NET :-)
    F# Interactive in Visual Studio currently uses Alt-Return as the key combination. We’re considering a gradual move to Ctrl-E given the precedent of its use by SQL.

  5. Jon Harrop 23. Oct, 2006 at 8:07 am

    I think you’re referring to F#’s “interactive mode”, where you can execute code snippets, test them and get feedback on their results and inferred types by pressing ALT+ENTER.
    I just put up a short tutorial video about this here:
    http://www.ffconsultancy.com/dotnet/fsharp/
    Let me know what you think!
    Cheers,
    Jon.

  6. Jon Harrop 23. Oct, 2006 at 8:07 am

    I think you’re referring to F#’s “interactive mode”, where you can execute code snippets, test them and get feedback on their results and inferred types by pressing ALT+ENTER.
    I just put up a short tutorial video about this here:
    http://www.ffconsultancy.com/dotnet/fsharp/
    Let me know what you think!
    Cheers,
    Jon.