Don Syme's WebLog on F# and Related Topics

IEEE Computer Society Webinar: Try F# for Big and Broad Data - Tuesday May 7

2013-05-03T17:42:24Z

Next Tuesday I'll be taking part in an IEEE Computer Society Webinar about Try F#. Please join us! Register here.

Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2013 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 19:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour)

Try F# is an easy on-ramp to learning F#, a simple and pragmatic programming language combining functional, object-oriented and scripting programming. During the webinar you will learn how to use the tutorials to solve real-world scenarios, including analytical programming and information-rich programming encountered in finance and data science. At the end of the webinar you will be able to bring the web of data to your fingertips through type providers, write code in the browser and share it with the rest of the community.

Evelyne Viegas, Director Semantic
Computing
Evelyne Viegas is the Director of Semantic Computing at Microsoft Research. Semantic Computing is about interacting with data in rich, safe and semantically meaningful ways, to create the path from data to information, knowledge and intelligence. Her latest project working in partnership with universities and developers includes Try F#.

Christophe Poulain, Senior Software
Developer
Christophe is a Senior Research SDE in the Connections team of Microsoft Research. One of his current interests is the development and the application of software to solve problems that involve massive amounts of data and computation. His recent project includes functional programming in the browser with Try F#.

Don Syme, Principal Researcher
Don Syme is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge. His main current responsibility is the design and implementation of F# (blog), though he’s also worked on C# and, indirectly, Visual Basic and other languages. His area is programming language design and implementation, with emphasis on making functional languages that are simpler to use, interoperate well with other
languages and which incorporate aspects of object-oriented, asynchronous and parallel programming.

Kenji Takeda, Solutions Architect and Technology
Manager
Dr Kenji Takeda is Solutions Architect and Technical Manager for the Microsoft Research Connections EMEA team. He has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, High Performance and High Productivity Computing, Data-intensive Science, Scientific Workflows, Scholarly Communication, Engineering and Educational Outreach.

Miguel de Icaza discusses Xamarin support for F# on Channel 9

2013-04-24T17:40:00Z

Last week, at the Xamarin Evolve conference, Xamarin announced support for the F# language as part of the Xamarin tools for iOS and Android app programming. Microsoft were Platinum sponsors of Xamarin Evolve.

Videos from Evolve will be available soon (link). In the meantime, you can watch Miguel de Icaza, one of the founders of Xamarin, discuss the F# support they have added (the F# part starts at 21min 55s) in this Channel 9 video

The announcement from Xamarin means you can now create iOS and Android applications using 100% F# code, or alternatively use the C#-F# pattern where front-end logic is in C# and some or all application components are in F#. As an example, here is a PacMan game for iOS written entirely in F#. In this case nearly all the game logic can be shared across iOS, Android, Windows 8 (in portable libraries), Windows 8 Phone and WPF.

Somewhat surprisingly, the announcement from Xamarin means F# now has one of the broadest cross-platform development stories amongst all functional-first languages (e.g. it is difficult to use Scala on iOS at the moment, according to this link). In addition, we have the wonderful editions of Visual F# from Microsoft.

The F# Software Foundation provide some instructions on how to get going with the Xamarin tools at http://fsharp.org/use/android and http://fsharp.org/use/ios.

Thanks to Charles at Microsoft Channel 9 for doing the interview with Miguel. And well done to Xamarin and the F# open source community for making this happen.

Don

Tonight at the F# New York City Meetup: F# MVC for WPF with Dmitry Morozov

2013-04-23T22:00:48Z

Tonight (actually in about half an hour) Dmitry Morozov will be talking at the F# New York City Meetup on F# MVC for WPF.

F# is known as a great language to express complex algorithms, crunch numbers and process all kinds of data. Have you ever wondered if it can be effectively used for such down-to-earth task as WPF GUI development?

“F# MVC for WPF” is a small yet powerful framework designed for building WPF applications in F#. With strong support for MVC, functional, asynchronous and event-driven programming it enables you to build your solution quickly without sacrificing type system or testability.

Project's wiki: https://github.com/dmitry-a-morozov/fsharp-wpf-mvc-series/wiki

Dmitry is a software engineer with ThomsonReuters. He has been using F# successfully for the past 4 years in his everyday work to develop different kinds of enterprise software.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 6:30 PM, Microsoft Offices, 6th floor, 1290 Avenue of the Americas between 51st and 52nd Streets, New York, NY(map)

F# and QuantLib: An Introduction

2013-04-23T14:45:51Z

Over on the Visual F# team blog we have an article introducing you to using QuantLib from F#:

A Guest Blog in conjunction with Alexandre Radicchi (alex.radi@gmail.com)

F# is an attractive language to use in Financial Engineering because of its functional-first methodology, succinctness, strong typing, data-integration, stability, maturity, tooling and performance, as well as its supported editions in Visual Studio, its open-source edition, its cross-platform execution and its widespread availability. You can explore tutorials on using F# for Financial Engineering on Try F#.

QuantLib represents a unique project in the Financial Engineering panorama because of its maturity and of the vast quantity of tools implemented, all for free. In many situations it represents a sensible choice especially when starting a new project from scratch. QuantLib is written in C++ but wrappers to many other languages exist. You can take a look at the project home page for further information. The majority of these wrappers are implemented using SWIG.

This blog post explores how to use F# in conjunction with QuantLib.

full post here

On Today: Online Event: Rachel Reese - Getting Started with F#

2013-04-16T14:24:48Z

Late notice, but just to mention that Rachel Reese is giving an online session "Getting Started with F#" in about 90 minutes time!

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=M2JSRZ&role=attend&pw=NJ%22%256gC%21x

When: Tuesday, Apr 16, 2013 12:00 PM (EDT)

In this talk, we'll go over the fundamental concepts of F#, and functional programming in general; you'll get up to speed on the benefits and use cases of F#; and become familiarized with the language features, syntax, and constructs through a few simple examples. By the end of this talk, you'll be ready to jump into F# development.

Bio: Rachel Reese is a long-time software engineer and math geek with a moving habit. She's recently relocated to the lovely Burlington, VT, where she started the local functional programming user group, @VTFun. She's also an ASPInsider, a community enthusiast, and a Rachii. You can find her on twitter, @rachelreese, or on her blog: rachelree.se.

Meeting time: Apr 16, 2013 12:00 PM (EDT)

Add to my Outlook Calendar: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/meetingICS?id=M2JSRZ&role=attend&pw=NJ%22%256gC%21x&i=i.ics

AUDIO INFORMATION-Computer Audio(Recommended) To use computer audio, you need speakers and microphone, or a headset.

FIRST-TIME USERS To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703

Learn F# in New York - Fast Track to F# with Tomas Petricek, 30 April - 1 May

2013-04-10T16:22:00Z

Are you in the US and interested in learning F#? Tomas Petricek will be giving the successful "Fast Track to F#" course on 30 April - 1 May in New York:

This two day Fast Track to F# course is what you need to start using F# in practice and to get the most out of functional and concurrent programming concepts. The course is designed by F# experts Tomas Petricek and Phil Trelford and builds on their real-world experience with F#.

F# is increasingly used in domains such as finance, gaming, mobile and web development, testing and more. The language makes it possible to solve complex problems with simple, maintainable and robust code.

In this course, we look at a number of applications. We explore how F# simplifies domain modelling and testing. Then we look at F# killer features for asynchronous and concurrent programming and for data processing.

After attending the course, you’ll be able to solve interesting problems with F#, but you’ll also become a better programmer in general.

Enjoy!

Don

Learn F# - Hands On: This Thursday, London F# Meetup

2013-04-10T10:56:04Z

For those in the London area, there is a "Learn F# Hands On" session this Thursday evening at the London F# Meetup. All levels of experience welcome, from beginner to expert.

In this regular meetup we'll take on one or more programming challenges in F#. All levels of experience welcome, from beginner to expert.

This month we'll take a look at some the tasks on the excellent Try F# site.

To get the most from the session please try and bring a laptop along with F# installed (ideally either MonoDevelop, Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio Web Express/Full Edition). Don't worry if you can't if you have a PC or Mac (not iPad) you can do the exercises in the browser.

Please register on Skills Matter page too.

Enjoy!

don

F# testimonials on fsharp.org

2013-04-07T18:01:00Z

The F# Software Foundation's Testimonials Page on http://fsharp.org is well worth a read. They are very inspiring!

If you or your organization have been using F#, you can also submit your own testimonials using these simple instructions. They can be your personal views, and you can anonymize as necessary.

Don

p.s. For those who haven't heard, the F# Software Foundation (a.k.a "fsharp.org") is a community-led group. You can read its mission statement on the site. I think it is a great initiative that acts as a wonderful complement to the investments both Microsoft and other groups are making in the language. If you're into F#, I'd encourage you to become a member (just email fsharp@fsharp.org) and to contribute.

"Stati-C/AL Supervision – static analysis for Microsoft Dynamics NAV"

2013-04-07T12:28:22Z

Steffen Forkmann has reported abot Stati-C/AL, a code analysis tool for Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Christian Clausen and Bent Rasmussen created a really really cool static analysis tool for Dynamics NAV. For those who worked with the Dynamics NAV Developer’s Toolkit this is your new friend:

Static analysis is dear to my heart as a way of improving programmer productivity, and I'm always impressed when people focus on the integration of languages and business products. And, it happens to be implemented in F#.

“Supervision is a free software program which can transform C/AL object text files into color-coded hyper-linked interactive HTML files. The purpose of Supervision is to give Microsoft Dynamics NAV developers an easy and intuitive way to browse C/AL source code which provides better insight into the semantics of C/AL programs.”

Some of the features are:

Produces HTML/JavaScript code from Microsoft Dynamics NAV text export files
Usages of user-defined functions, variables, parameters, fields, system-defined variables, and object types link to their declaration
Usages of C/AL system functions link to official Microsoft C/AL language documentation
Code coloring
It’s blazing-fast

The F# Weekly #13

2013-04-07T12:20:02Z

I was particularly inspired by the latest F# Weekly from the F# Community (feed here). This edition really shows the incredible range of application of F# and activity in the F# community, from HTML5 GeoLocation examples using WebSharper to interoperability with Java to GPGPU programming to machine learning algorithms using Adaptive Boosting.

Enjoy!

Don

Welcome to F# Weekly,

One more week has passed. This past week was full of interesting blog posts that are waiting for you:

News

Don Syme is 10000000th NOOO signatory.
WebSharper geolocation example: reverse geocoding with Google Maps API
Spreadsheet project Cellz written in F# now supports WPF as well as Silverlight next Windows 8
Fjord : implementation of F# for the JVM (implementation at very early stages)
F# and Node.js soon to run together in-process.
The F# Software Foundation now have a Twitter account!
miTLS: A verified implementation of TLS using F# and F7.
IKVM.NET 7.3 RC 0 was published.

Video

“Direct3D9 Interop with Alea.cuBase” by Xiang Zhang.

Blogs

Mike Harris wrote “On Mapping“.
Done Syme posted “Quote of the Week: “What can C# do that F# cannot?”“
Taha Hachana shared “WebSharper Canvas Tutorial (I.): Introduction“.
Sergey Tihon blogged “R Type Provider in Action“.
Mathias Brandewinder wrote about “Simplify data with SVD and Math.NET in F#“.
Steffen Forkmann posted “Statically typed access to JSON and XML by using schema inference“.
Anton Tayanovskyy blogged “WebSharper, PhoneGap, and Ripple: easier native HTML5 apps“.
Jeffrey Sax wrote “Using Numerical Libraries for .NET from F#“.
Eirik Tsarpalis described “A declarative argument parser for F#“
Tomas Petricek announced “F# Data: New type provider library“.
Steffen Forkmann wrote “FSharpx 1.8 removes support for Freebase, CSV, JSON and XML document type providers“.
Richard Minerich blogged “Setting up F# Interactive for Machine Learning with Large Datasets“.
Sergey Tihon wrote about “Using Neo4j Graph DB With F#“.
Anton Tayanovskyy shared “Generalizing records combinators a bit“.
Phil Trelford posted “Moq.FSharp.Extensions“.
Adil Akhter wrote “UVa 10706. Number Sequence with F#“.
Santi Albo blogged “Monads in F#“
Sergey Tihon posted “My first disappointment on F# type system“
Salman Quazi shared “.NET and Node.JS – Performance Comparison“.
Mike Harris wrote “On CPS Part 1“.
Anton Tayanovskyy posted “FAKE with NuGet support“.
Guillaume Lecomte blogged “Response to the .NET vs Node.JS performance post“.
Anton Tayanovskyy wrote “TypeScript: initial impressions“.
Suzanna shared “AdaBoost in F#“.
Santi Albo wrote “Introduction to Parser Combinators“.
Ashley Nathan Feniello posted “Colemak“.
Sergey Tihon published “#fsharp Community Twitter Activity 2013 Q1“.
Robin Neatherway blogged “fsharp-mode 0.9“(F# Emacs integration).
Lev Gorodinski posted “The Domain-Driven Design (DDD) Maturity Model“.

That’s all for now. Have a great week.

Previous F# Weekly edition – #12