Don Syme's WebLog on F# and Related Topics

F#/C# Contract Position for Silverlight/HTML 5 User Interface Development at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK

2012-01-30T17:32:00Z

Microsoft Research Cambridge has available a 6-month contract position for development of web-based user interfaces for designing and simulating computer models of biological systems. We are looking for an experienced and highly-motivated individual to produce easy-to-use interfaces for the software tools developed by our Computational Science Lab. The aim of the post is to produce user interfaces to simplify and encourage the trial and adoption of our research prototypes within the wider research community, and the initial focus of the work will be on software for Biological Computation (http://research.microsoft.com/biology).

The user interfaces will be for a family of modelling languages, which are being used in a number of key scientific projects, from building computational circuits in DNA (http://research.microsoft.com/dna), to genetic engineering of living cells (http://research.microsoft.com/gec), to understanding and predicting the response of the human immune system (http://research.microsoft.com/spim). The candidate will be working in an exciting new field at the intersection of computer science and biology, and the results of the project could potentially have an impact on a broad community of researchers, both in academia and industry.

The first phase of the project will involve investigating the feasibility of translating existing computational modelling software from Silverlight to HTML5, with the help of existing translation tools such as Websharper (http://www.websharper.com) and Sharpkit (http://sharpkit.net).

The second phase of the project will involve investigating the feasibility of translating a Silverlight visual editor to HTML5. The visual editor relies on a C# library for graph layout, developed within Microsoft Research (http://research.microsoft.com/msagl). There is also an opportunity to extend the C# library to improve its visual editing capabilities.

This is an exciting opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge software development, visual programming language design, and research into computational modelling of complex natural systems The candidate must be willing to work in Cambridge, UK, and the contract is for 6 months with the possibility of extending this to 2 years. Interested candidates should contact Andrew Phillips (firstname.lastname@microsoft.com) with a CV. The start date is flexible, however the position is available from February 2012.

Duration: 6 months

Location: Cambridge, UK

Required skills:

HTML5, Silverlight, WPF, C# programming
User interface development
Ability to capture user requirements and translate these into easy-to-use tools

Additional desired skills:

Knowledge of automatic graph layout algorithms
Experience in developing visual editors
Experience in F# programming

First F# Seattle Meetup This Saturday, Redmond

2012-01-25T09:42:00Z

The first F# Seattle Meetup has been announced! It will be held this Saturday, on the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

http://www.meetup.com/FSharpSeattle/events/49365112/

Don

In this first meeting, we will introduce F# and the new features in F# 3.0 and how to use F# in the daily programming tasks.

F# Introduction and 3.0 New Features

Saturday, January 28, 2012, 2:30 PM

Microsoft building 32 - Room 1027

3620 163rd Avenue NE, Redmond, WA 98052

London F# Meetup Group this Thursday: Pacman Kata

2012-01-24T14:44:34Z

This Thursday, January 26, the F#unctional Londoners are holding an event to help you improve your F# coding skills! (This event may or may not be in celebration of Australia Day and India's Republic Day - you decide!)

This event will be a coding kata. If you don't know what this is, here's the description from Wikipedia:

Code Kata is a term coined by Dave Thomas, co-author of the book The Pragmatic Programmer, in a bow to the Japanese concept of kata in the martial arts. A code kata is an exercise in programming which helps a programmer hone their skills through practice and repetition.

Here's the story for the event:

Pacman finds himself in a grid filled with monsters. Will he be able to eat all the dots on the board before the monsters eat him?

pacman is on a grid filled with dots
pacman eats dots
pacman stops on walls
ghosts follow pacman...

The F#unctional Londonders Meetup Group starts 2012 with a hands-on coding Kata by implementing Pacman. This session is suitable for people new to F# who'd like to learn more and for more experienced F# developers looking to practice their skills. See also: http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataPacMan for more info, and be sure to register your attendance here: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/pacman-kata/js-2040

Don

F# 3.0 at TechDays France, Feb 7, Paris!

2012-01-22T17:43:00Z

Just to mention that there will be a talk on F# 3.0 at TechDays France in Paris, on February 7, at 4pm.

F# 3.0: data, services, Web, cloud, at your fingertips (LAN209)

You can find all the details here: http://www.microsoft.com/france/mstechdays/programmes/parcours.aspx#SessionID=50dbf05c-e3fd-4129-b5d9-c2b458236728

Modern programming thrives on rich spaces of data, information and services. With F# 3.0 and Visual Studio 11, you now have a tool that massively simplifies information-rich analytical programming. F# 3.0 provides integrated support for F# Information Rich Programming, a new and powerful way of integrating data and services into your programming experience. In this talk, we will describe the new features of F# 3.0, including the first released version of F# Type Providers and F# Queries, with apps to leverage technologies such as SharePoint, Azure Data Market, OData, Entity Framework and SQL Server.

F#, WebSharper, JavaScript, HTML5, Mobile etc.

2012-01-22T17:03:00Z

I'm catching up on blogging about what's been going on in F# lately.

One thing that happened over the vacation is that the F# HTML5/Mobile development tool called WebSharper is now open source, and free for use for open source projects (details on the site). There is also a community project called Pit (also on github) which compiles F# to JavaScript, and which I'll write about separately. You can use these today in conjunction with F# 2.0 in Visual Studio 2010. With WebSharper there is ASP.NET integration as well, and add-ons to target extra web/HTML5/mobile functionality.

If you don't know about WebSharper, the website is here. The guys behind the project call WebSharper "the world's most versatile web and mobile development platform".

As we all know, there is a growing amount of activity in compiling languages to JavaScript, e.g. languages like Dart. Now, compiling-to-JavaScript is not functionality Microsoft include with F# 2.0 or 3.0. But personally I think its great to see the F# community compiling F# to JavaScript with both WebSharper and Pit. It seems like this is an area where the community will be really active.

And I can see why. When you do JavaScript/HTML5/mobile programming with F# as the development language, you get the usual F# goodness: strong typing, full intellisense, type inference, asynchrony, pattern matching, Visual Studio development, units of measure, ... and the power of a modern typed functional programming language. You also get the performance and functionality of .NET for the portion of your code that runs on the server side. No need to use NodeJS on the server to get a homogeneous language across client/server. And no need to wait for new languages. Indeed, this is related to the research vision pursued by Tomas Petricek when he first got involved in F# back in 2006.

Furthermore, on the server-side you get the option of cloud integration, including the Azure technologies for ASP.NET, Hadoop on Azure and Cloud Numerics, and emerging tools like M-Brace. This gives homogeneous strongly-typed programming with a modern, high-productivity functional langauge, all the way from device to cloud, and encompassing the traditional enterprise along the way.

Equally, I can see the attraction of other techniques for the device UI, and that would be our normal recommendation for F# in the absence of WebSharper and Pit. HTML5 and JavaScript are themselves a great ecosystem. And you can use standard JavaScript/HTML5 (or CoffeeScript/HTML5) over F#-implemented services on the server-side. The F# MVP Dan Mohl has been tweeting and blogging about those possibilities a lot lately.

My personal belief is that JavaScript/HTML5 progrmaming will, over time, trend towards a range of languages which will support homogeneous client/server programming. JavaScript itself is and will remain huge. But it seems we're sure to continue to see typed languages that compile to both JavaScript and .NET/JVM/.... (GWT, Opa etc.) If you look at these kinds of languages, it seems to me that F# is nicely set up to play well in this space over the long term. F# is a succinct modern language, and logically speaking the language is relatively independent of .NET. Also, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, F# translates quite nicely to JavaScript, and indeed is quite similar to JavaScript in its focus on things like functional-first programming and asynchrony.

So, is F# "just" a .NET language? If you ask the F# community, it encompasses HTML5 and JavaScript as well. And certainly F# is an ASP.NET and Cloud language, through .NET, and for my day-to-day work my focus is on compiling F# to .NET and other implementations of the CLI (well, I'm very much focused on the wonderful new features for F# 3.0 available in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview). But the community seem to be taking F# to JavaScript/HTML5, and indeed F# was very much designed with this kind of flexibility in mind.

In any case, I like the idea that a language like F# is a living thing and that the community are doing things along these lines. Through making and using these tools they are taking F# to important places.

Don

F# Training in London in January and February: Functional Programming in .NET and Real World F# Programming

2012-01-21T18:06:22Z

Is it time to learn something new?

Training is key to growing F# adoption and understanding in your enterprise, as well as increasing the skillbase of your C# and other programmers mroe generally.

Here are some links to F# training courses in London in January and February, from the wonderful Tomas Petricek and Phil Trelford

Functional Programming in .NET (in London on 30 January and 16 April)
The course is designed for developers with some C# background who want to become better programmers and learn F# on the side. For booking, visit SkillsMatter web site or contact them directly.

Real-World F# Programming (in London on 8 February and 11 June)
The course is designed for people with some existing F# experience. It focuses on the most applications of F#, including data processing, asynchronous and concurrent programming. For booking, visit SkillsMatter web site or contact them directly.

Don

Microsoft Releases Local, Distributed and Cloud Numerics Library, with F# Samples

2012-01-21T18:00:39Z

At last, Microsoft have released its long awaited Cloud Numerics library!!! A huge congratulations to the Cloud Numerics team (follow their blog!), and I encourage everyone in the F# community to be looking at the use of these wonderful technologies together.

The recently announced library is a great fit for F# analytical computing. The Cloud Numerics team have posted some examples of how to use this library in F#, and learn how to do distributed numerics on Azure with F#.

This post walks through the steps required to use the “Cloud Numerics” distributed numerical and data analytics library from F#. While the “Cloud Numerics” lab focuses on C#, a few additional setup steps enable you to:

Write F# applications that use the “Cloud Numerics” lab libraries.
Use the deployment utility to scale-out your F# application to the Windows Azure cloud.

...calling these methods from F# methods feels natural. For example, consider the following F# source code example:

open Microsoft.Numerics
 // Compute the standard deviation for each time series
let stdev = 
 let sum = ArrayMath.Sum(timeSeriesNormalized * timeSeriesNormalized, 0L)
 let sqrt = BasicMath.Sqrt(sum / float(timeSeriesNormalized.Shape.[0]))
 Operations.MatrixMultiply(sqrt.Transpose(), sqrt)

Before You Begin

Before you begin to write “Cloud Numerics” F# code, complete the instructions in the “Cloud Numerics” Getting Started wiki post to:

Create an Azure account (if do not have one already)
Install “Cloud Numerics” on your local computer where you develop your F# applications
Configure and deploy a cluster in Azure
Submit the sample C# “Cloud Numerics” program to Azure.

Once you are able to build and run the sample C# application provided with the “Cloud Numerics” project template, you are ready to follow the steps in this post to create an F# “Cloud Numerics” application.

If you are interested in testing your “Cloud Numerics” F# project locally, on your local development machine, follow the steps in the Getting Started wiki post to run the sample application locally.

Of course, before you begin, you also need to have F# installed: go to http://fsharp.net and install the Visual F# CTP (April 2011).

Come and work with the F# group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge!

2012-01-14T12:19:00Z

Come and work with the F# group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge!

Microsoft Research in Cambridge has open positions for very high quality applicants with advanced computer science skills (normally recent PhD-level graduates or highly relevant industry experience), and internships for current PhD candidates or other talented masters students.

I would like to encourage potential candidates interested in any topic related to

F# itself, as a language and tool set
Topics on the boundary of F# and its applications (for example, GPGPU programming with F#, variaitons on Hadoop programming with F# or other parallel/advanced programming)
Variations on "Information rich programming" with F# and massively rich information sources, including other variations on meta-programming and compiler extensibility

A particular growing interest area for pulling advanced F# experimental work together is in the field of web-delivered, data-rich cloud programming. Think of taking some of the world's greatest applied programming language work, delivering it to high quality in educative web-delivered learning environments, combine it with innovative techniques for strong typing and information-rich programming, combine with the wealth of rich information sources that make the modern web, integrate with modern backend execution environments, strategies, machine-learning tools and products, both homogeneous and heterogeneous, and deliver it into the hands of real users. And that's just a starting point.

Often postdoc and intern positions at MSR have a 100% theory/research/publication focus. However, in this case we are explicitly interested in candidates who would like to pursue a combined practice & research agenda, looking for a virtuous feedback cycle between the two. In this situation, the joy of making things, playing with real software and delivering it to thousands users is valued as much as writing a paper. Candidates might also see this position as a transition step to a research position, a startup, a lead product development role, or to an academic role where hands-on practice is highly valued.

If you are completing your PhD, or have recently completed, and would like to consider working in this kind of field at MSR Cambridge, then please feel free to apply directly to me (dsyme AT microsoft.com), or apply directly for a postdoc position or an internship.

Don

Some F# Programming Jobs in London

2012-01-14T12:02:00Z

Regular readers of my blog will know that from time to time I post links to F# jobs as a courtesy to the F# community.

I particularly follow those in London, where we have F#unctional Londoners and other functional/finance/.NET user groups. Here are a few:

F# Developer, Finance, Agile

Senior F# Developer

C# WPF F# developer- Quant group

F# Developer/Programmer (C#, SQL) - Top Tier Investment Bank

C# Dev 4.0 Hedge Fund Statistical Arbitrage F#

C# / C++ / F# Developer - London - Hedge Fund

Data Analysis Machine Learning Engineer

Announcing an F# Meetup Group in Seattle

2011-12-08T21:57:14Z

An F# Meetup Group in Seattle has now been launched by Tao Liu on the F# team. (It's only just been created, so get in early!)

If you're in the Seattle or King County area and are interested in F#, then please join, and help get the group off to a great start.

A good meetup group absolutely depends on people participating by giving good presentations, and also on getting F# presenters who are coming through town to come by and give a talk. So start considering what talks you'd like to give, and what other activities you'd like to see the group doing. The meetup group site is a great place to propose new activities, topics and speakers.

There are also other F# meetup groups in New York, London as well as other related F# or functional or .NET meetup groups

6 Month Contract Position at MSR Cambridge: Cross-Platform and Web-Delivered Data-Rich Programming with F# 3.0

2011-12-08T21:25:08Z

Microsoft Research are seeking candidates for a 6-month contract position in F# programming to help improve the capabilities of F# in the area of cross-platform and web-delivered data-rich programming.

The candidate should have several of the following:

Excellent F# programming skills
Experience with ASP.NET, Web, Silverlight and/or Javascript programming
Experience with implementing tooling for typed languages including type checking, compilation, code editing and interactive evaluation
Knowledge of client-server programming and web-service implementation
Knowledge and experience of F# 3.0 type providers

In addition, we are also interested in people with the following skills:

Knowledge and experience with Hadoop and other map/reduce paradigms
Knowledge of schema implementation and transformation in functional programming languages
Knowledge and experience with web data and API technologies such as REST,
Experience with applied data-rich programming in areas such as bio-informatics, semantic-web or financial programming

If you are interested in working with us at MSR Cambridge for 6 months and have skills in the above areas, please contact me (dsyme@microsoft.com) or Alex Reed (alreed@microsoft.com) with your application details. The appointment would be for 6 months from Jan 2012. The position would be on location at Microsoft Research in the beautiful city of Cambridge, UK.

Separately, we are also looking for internship and post-phd applicants in related areas.

New York City F# Meetup Group: High Performance F#, in .NET and on the GPU with Jack Pappas, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 6:30 PM

2011-11-28T18:37:00Z

Tomorrow the NYC F# meetup group will hear from Jack Pappas. (Note: I think there is a waiting list for this event, but hopefully a larger room can be organized? Or perhaps a repeat of the event?)

High Performance F#, in .NET and on the GPU with Jack Pappas, Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 6:30 PM

Microsoft Offices, 6th floor, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY (map)

I'll discuss the benefits of using F# to build large .NET-based applications, and show how you can leverage F# language features to build robust, high-performance code. I'll follow this with some general background on parallel and GPU computing, then preview some upcoming features of GPU .NET – including support for F#.

Jack Pappas is CEO and Co-Founder of TidePowerd (http://www.tidepowerd.com), a company building tools for numerical software development. Jack has a background in numerical analysis and optimization and he primarily develops in F# and C#.

F# agents with timeouts

2011-11-18T00:04:00Z

Gordon has a blog post on F# agents with timeouts

In my previous post , I showed a code snippet with a very simple F# agent console application. You run the app from the console, and every time you enter a line of text, it generates a new message and posts it to the message queue of an F# agent. An agent...

Click here for the full article...

Enjoy!

Don

Updates to the August 2011 F# 2.0 Compiler Code Drop

2011-11-18T00:00:16Z

Over on the F# team blog we've announced Updates to the August 2011 F# 2.0 Compiler Code Drop

As announced at the Microsoft Research 20th Anniversary event in Cambridge UK, we have updated the F# 2.0 compiler source code drop to include changes related to the www.tryfsharp.org web application. The code drop is the compiler\2.0\Aug2011.1 directory in the F# PowerPack.

These changes allow you to compile the F# compiler as a browser-hosted (Silverlight 4.0) component. This can then be hosted inside a browser application. This is in keeping with our stated aims for the F# compiler source code drop: a source drop enables the F# community to develop and contribute a range of tools to the F# and Visual Studio ecosystem. These could be UI tools such as code visualizers, or editing tools such as refactorings, or new ways of executing, hosting or interpreting F# code, or new F# editing experiences.

A sample browser application has been included under the "samples" directory, which shows how to use the compiler component to do four things:

Host a F#-Interactive-style dynamic compiler which accepts text streams as input and produces a text stream as output. This is technique used by www.tryfsharp.org
Compile a script to an assembly and save it to IsolatedStorage
Compile a script to an assembly and produce a dynamic DLL (which is then either executed or inspected using reflection from within the browser application, including extracting ReflectedDefinition quotations from the assembly)
Inspect the tokenization, quick info and other intellisense information for a script

This source code is under the Apache 2.0 license and is published as part of the F# PowerPack codeplex project, which is now also under the Apache 2.0 license. The F# PowerPack includes libraries, tools and the compiler/library source code drops.

Enjoy!

The F# team

StatFactory: FCore maths & statistics library, designed for use with F#

2011-11-17T11:15:22Z

Regular readers of my blog will know that from time to time I post pointers to technologies that work with F#, as a service to the F# community. I've blogged in the past about other maths and stats libraries that work with F#, and am adding another one today!

StatFactory have released FCore, a .NET/native numerical library that is "specifically designed for those who want to use F# in their quantitative development". Here's a snippet from their website:

Our product "FCore" is a .NET numerical library which has been specifically designed for those who want to use F# in their quantitative development on .NET platform. FCore features a dedicated F# API which users will find very familiar and easy to learn. Most FCore functions call internally Intel Math Kernel Library for maximum performance on Intel platform. ...FCore can bypass .NET 2GB memory restriction and manipulate matrices of virtually unlimited sizes (64 bit version).

They also offer assistance with moving to F# ("Frustrated with your current numerical development platform? We can help with the transition..."), and if you need bespoke functionality they also offer to assist with that.

Enjoy!

Don

Tonight at F#unctional Londoners: Byron Cook: Proving program termination with F#

2011-11-16T07:37:00Z

Tonight my colleague Byron Cook from MSR Cambridge will be speaking at the F#unctional Londoners meetup group

Byron Cook: Proving program termination with F#

Wednesday, November 16, 2011, 6:30 PM

The Skills Matter eXchange 116-120 Goswell Road, London (map)

In recent years we have seen great progress made in the area of automatic source-level static analysis tools. However, most of today’s program verification tools are limited to properties that guarantee the absence of bad events (safety properties). Until now no formal software analysis tool has provided fully automatic support for proving properties that ensure that good events eventually happen (liveness properties).

In this talk, Dr Byron Cook presents such a tool, which handles liveness properties of large systems written in C. Liveness properties are described in an extension of the specification language used in the SDV system. We have used the tool to automatically prove critical liveness properties of Windows device drivers and found several previously unknown liveness bugs.

MonoDevelop User Voice: Vote for Full F# Support

2011-11-07T14:57:00Z

The MonoDevelop team have taken a leaf out of the Visual Studio team's book and started MonoDevelop User Voice. Here you can vote on MonoDevelop features and discuss them.

One of the hot ticket items you might like to vote for right now is Full Support for F# from MonoDevelop. This would presumably build on this great initial work, which is now on GitHub.

Don

Job at MSR Cambridge: Infer.NET

2011-11-02T19:07:00Z

Microsoft Research Cambridge is seeking talented software developers to work on the Infer.NET project (http://research.microsoft.com/infernet).

Infer.NET is a framework for developing and deploying machine learning and inference solutions. It has been developed within the Machine Learning and Perception group, which has an excellent track record of incorporating leading edge research into bestselling products including the body part recognition technology in Kinect for Xbox 360 and the advertising prediction algorithm used in Bing. Be a part of the next of wave of the data driven computing revolution!

The successful candidate will be responsible for executing all phases of software development on Infer.NET, including design, implementation, performance tuning, testing, and documentation.

Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or similar field. A masters or Ph.D. degree is desirable.
Strong software development skills in C# and/or C++ [ To which Don says: F# also appreciated, but the core of Infer.NET is implemented in C# :-) ]
Experience shipping commercial software applications or services.
Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Strong problem solving ability.
Knowledge of machine learning algorithms, web services and internet technologies, API design, compilers, and networking are all desirable.
Expertise in server side software development with emphasis on scalability, reliability, asynchronous and concurrent programming is desirable.

The candidate must be willing to work in Cambridge, UK.

Interested candidates should contact John Bronskill (firstname.lastname@microsoft.com) with a resume or CV or formally apply using one of the links below:

https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=2&jid=66116&jlang=EN

https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=4&jid=66118&jlang=EN

https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?gl=&jc=&ct=&rg=&ss=&pg=0&sort=&rw=3&jid=66117

Progressive F# Tutorials at SkillsMatter, London, Thu-Fri This Week

2011-11-01T17:46:43Z

For those in the UK or Europe, there are a set of F# tutorials at SkillsMatter in London on Thursday and Friday this week (Nov 3-4)

Please pass this along to those who need to know.

Thanks

Don

Potential Post-PhD and Internship Positions in Web-Delivered, Data-Rich Cloud Programming

2011-10-19T16:01:00Z

Microsoft Research in Cambridge has ongoing Post-doctorate positions open for very high quality recent PhD-level graduates, and internships for current PhD candidates. I would like to encourage potential candidates interested in the field of web-delivered, data-rich cloud programming. Think of taking some of the world's greatest applied programming language work, delivering it to high quality in educative web-delivered learning environments, combine it with innovative techniques for strong typing and information-rich programming, combine with the wealth of rich information sources that make the modern web, integrate with modern backend execution environments, strategies, machine-learning tools and products, both homogeneous and heterogeneous, and deliver it into the hands of real users. And that's just a starting point.

Often postdoc and intern positions at MSR have a 100% theory/research/publication focus. However, I am explicitly interested in candidates who would like to pursue a combined practice & research agenda, looking for a virtuous feedback cycle between the two. In this situation, the joy of making things, playing with real software and delivering it to thousands users is valued as much as writing a paper. Candidates might also see this position as a transition step to a research or lead product development role, or to an academic role where hands-on practice is highly valued.

If you are completing your PhD, or have recently completed, and you would like to consider working in this kind of field at MSR Cambridge, then please feel free to approach me, or to apply directly for a postdoc position or an internship.

Don

How to let other teams at Microsoft know how they can support F# better

2011-10-17T23:01:00Z

Would you like to see other teams at Microsoft doing specific things to support F# better? Then now you have a great way to let them know!

For example, lets say you would like the .NET CLR to implement more and better floating point optimizations around SSE4, AVX etc. Then go and add your votes to this Visual Studio suggestion! Also, add your comments and join the discussion - make your case why this is a crucial feature for high performance programming.

Similarly, would you like the Visual Studio debugger to have better support for F#? Do you have some specific suggestions in mind? Then go and tell the Visual Studio Debugger team over in this section of the Visual Studio ideas website.

Likewise, would you like more samples for using F# with another technology, like specific parts of the BCL or a .NET technology like Windows Workflow? There are sections for these on the site as well, and people at Microsoft are eager to hear feedback like this.

Remember, the more of your friends you get to vote, and the better your feedback, the more that helps Microsoft make great products. It can be real fun to discuss platform and tooling features and try to work out what should and shouldn't be supported, so go and make your case today :-)

Don

P.S. Another great way to contact teams about F# support is through their blogs. For example, you might like Visual Studio LightSwitch to support F# - if so, the Visual Studio LightSwitch team blog is here, likewise the Visual Web Developer Express team, or if you have feedback about specific code optimizations needed from the CLR, then drop a line to the CLR Code Generation team here, or the CLR Perf team here.

Please submit, vote on and discuss F# and Visual Studio features

2011-10-13T23:08:00Z

Visual Studio now has a great site where you can enter and vote on features for languages and otehr aspects of Visual Studio.

Submit and Vote on F# and Visual Studio Features Here!

Please take the time to vote on features and submit new ones. This is a very helpful way for us to garner feedback.

Thanks

Don

Today's the day to say it.... I'm an Apple II kid

2011-10-06T14:17:00Z

Today's the day to say it loud and clear: I'm an Apple II kid....

I grew up in Toowoomba, Australia, and had the good fortune to go to a (then somewhat radical) primary school which had an Apple II+ for use in Year 6 and 7. I guess it was 1979-1982. My brother had already taught me the joys of a programmable HP calculator, and my Dad had taught us the joys of 8'' floppy disks and programming Mastermind games on his (Digital?) machine at work. At primary school we got to set our own timetables, and I included a share on the computer, plus time at lunch with Mitchell, Duncan and others - fun times and good memories.

Then my Dad bought an Apple IIe, and, well, that was that. We wrote everything with it: farming software, games, bush fire simulators for science projects, essays, economic simulators, physics projects and goodness knows what else... Lots of Applesoft BASIC (which I only recently discovered came from Microsoft!), lots of learning about Logo, assembly code, peeks, pokes, shape tables, direct screen addressing...There was a local Apple store in this shop - we went there most weekends. The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.

I'm an Apple II kid, and in many ways still am. Thanks Steve (Jobs), thanks Steve (Wozniak), and thanks Apple, and thanks to the friends, primary school and father who gave me the chance to dive deep so early.

F# 2-Year Contract Position for Biological Modelling Language Development

2011-10-05T20:42:00Z

Here are some details on an F# contract position at MSR Cambridge.

Contract Position for Biological Modelling Language Development (F#)

Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK - 4th October 2011

Microsoft Research Cambridge has available a 2-year contract position for development of a programming environment for designing and simulating computer models of biological systems. The environment supports a family of modelling languages and simulation algorithms, which are being used in a number of key scientific projects, from building computational circuits in DNA (http://research.microsoft.com/dna) to genetic engineering of living cells (http://research.microsoft.com/gec) to understanding and predicting the response of the human immune system (http://research.microsoft.com/spim). The candidate will be working in an exciting new field at the intersection of computer science and biology, and the results of the project could potentially have an impact on a broad community of researchers, both in academia and industry.

The first objective of the position will be to extend existing biological modelling languages with high-level language constructs based on feedback from scientific collaborators in DNA computing, Synthetic Biology, Immunology and Developmental Biology. The language extensions will include high-level interaction mechanisms which mask some of the complexities of the lower-level languages, together with constructs for modelling biological experiments. The candidate will be expected to formalise these extensions using rigorous semantics and carry out the implementation work in F# for release online. If desired, the candidate will have the opportunity to publish the results in leading journals or conferences. The candidate will work closely with a User Interface developer, in order to connect the core language with a web interface, developed in Silverlight.

The second objective of the project will be to integrate multiple modelling languages simultaneously within a common language runtime for biology. Preliminary details of this work are available from http://research.microsoft.com/bme/draft.pdf. The work will also involve extending the scope of the runtime to handle state-based and scenario-based modelling languages.

The candidate must be willing to work in Cambridge, UK, and the contract is for 2 years. Interested candidates should contact Andrew Phillips (firstname.lastname@microsoft.com) with a CV. The start date is flexible, however the position is available from December 2011.

Duration of contract: 2 years

Location: Cambridge

Education: MS. or Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Required skills:

Strong applied functional programming skills in Standard ML, OCaml, F# or Haskell.
In-depth knowledge of programming language theory.
Experience in programming language implementation.
A strong desire to contribute to the scientific community through the development of concise, efficient, scalable languages and tools for modelling and simulation of biological systems.

Additional desired skills:

Knowledge of stochastic simulation algorithms such as Gillespie's Direct Method, or ability to understand research articles on related algorithms for subsequent implementation.
Familiarity with process calculi and associated theory.
Experience with implementing inference-based type systems.

Background: The candidate will be based in the Biological Computation Group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. The group is studying biological systems across multiple scales and is tackling fundamental scientific questions across multiple domains. Current projects include designing molecular circuits made of DNA, and programming single cells that cooperate to perform complex functions over time and space. We also aim to understand the computation performed by cells during organ development, and how the adaptive immune system detects viruses and cancers in the human body, focusing on mechanism and function. We are tackling these questions through the development of computational models and domain-specific computational tools, in close collaboration with leading scientific research groups. The tools we develop are being integrated into a common modelling environment. Further information about the group is available at http://research.microsoft.com/biology, including links to our software tools, which are freely available for use by the scientific community.

The MSR Cambridge Research Games Team invite you to play Blotto

2011-10-05T18:06:00Z

My colleagues at MSR Cambridge in the research games team have released a Facebook app called “Project Waterloo” (http://apps.facebook.com/msrwaterloo).

The app allows users to play the two-player turn-based game called Blotto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blotto_games) with other Facebook users. Blotto is an incredibly interesting game which is well known in the game theory community.

We would like to invite you to play this game with family and friends, and give us your feedback. Your feedback would be highly appreciated and would help us improving this and future applications for game theory research. Please send us your feedback and comments on: researchgames@microsoft.com.

Some screenshots below :-)