Sam Stokes on Research in your life and studies : Science

ClimateGate: Setting up the experiment to measure “heat”, thinking about thermodynamics

SoCal Sam — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:37:01 GMT

There are a few laws in the universe and thermodynamics has a lock on some of the more depressing statements. As I think of them:

First Law of Thermodynamics: You can win

Second Law of Thermodynamics: The first law is wrong, and not only can’t you win, everything in the universe will die because of the lack of energy.

That sucks.

So what is the first law:

The first law is a statement of the conservation of energy for thermodynamic systems. This includes a cardboard box, and it includes the earth and the atmosphere and oceans, just a difference in scale. A precise meaning requires a definition of what the “energy of the system” and the “energy that the system receives from its environment during a transformation.”

In your car, muscles, atmosphere the energy is equal to the sum of the kinetic energies and the potential energies. This means to precisely sum the total energy in our cardboard box we have to consider the dynamics of the system of our heat source and surrounding environment.

That is it for now. I am working along in Fermi’s Thermodynamics, I thought that I would use some notes I had found from Bohr, but I really was talking about Fermi.

Climategate, global warming and provenance

SoCal Sam — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:50:29 GMT

Ok, taking a chance here: I reviewed the emails and don’t really get the whole “global warming” as a scam. Clearly the globe is warming after the mini-ice age between 1500 and 1825 or so. During the period since the mini-ice age, the human population has grown, built beautiful cities, roadways and generally turned the earth into a wonderful place to be alive. Sure there are a large number of people who live in poverty that I can’t even understand, but in an earlier era these people simply would not exist. Now the people who are impoverished have an opportunity to survive and to build a better world for them.

No, what I take away from Climategate is that the science was poorly documented and the process of peer review was shunted into an ego driven process. This does not mean that the climate isn’t being changed by human input, it means that the investigation into the processes and science (as they say in the public media) is suspect. Why? Because a reasonable person, who has knowledge of the scientific method cannot reproduce the results claimed by the so called global warming researchers.

You might be thinking, well the global warming researchers used tools I have no access to, and science I can’t understand. Fortunately, the reality is that the science is quite simple, it is the processes of data collection or workflow that were complex and hidden from you.

If you are reading this blog, I think it is safe to say you have the talent and intelligence to follow the global warming science, it isn’t anymore complicated than the way that Dancing with the Stars, or America’s Top Model judging is accomplished, perhaps less so. Science is the process of using simple observations to gain knowledge about the universe. Even the Cern accelerator is basically getting data from the mass of the objects that break off when you collide electrons at speeds near the speed of light.

The main part of the scientific method is that any results must be reproducible by other researchers, with respect to the CERN, you would go there to repeat the experiments. For global warming you might use observations about where you live and add the observations to data input by many other people.

What this means that the data used by the initial researchers must be available for the future researchers to confirm using similar but not identical equipment, processes and so forth. Ok, maybe some researchers will use identical equipment, but with all the equipment most universities have these days it is unlikely that the equipment will be the same, but the equipment will be calibrated back to certain standards. If the research, such as the research using tree rings, would mean that tree rings from one part of the region where they were taken would match other tree rings from the similar region. Also, if tree rings are used, then there would be a certain way for the tree rings to be measured that is reproducible, and if, for example, tree rings were used, then tree rings would be able to reproduce the temperature of the air in a reliable manner, or produce data that is an analog that anyone could utilize.

All of this data would be stored into a system that would allow other scientists to reproduce the research, this is part of the research is called the workflow. How can you get involved in examining workflows and create your own? Take a look at the Trident Workbench, just out from Microsoft Research, this is an awesome tool that allows you to use free tools from Microsoft to create open source workflows that you can share with others! You will need to install SQL Express on your laptop or desktop, but this is a free download from http://www.microsoft.com, type in SQL Express into the search bar at Microsoft.com, if you use google or bing, then there are some sites that will attempt to get you to pay money for the download, and this product is entirely free! When you do the installation make sure to add the service pack 1 or the engine won’t run.

More in the next blog on climate gate. For now make sure to take a look at the following videos and web pages to get up to speed on the pro and anti-global warming groups:

Pro-global warming: Real Climate Website

Anti-global warming: ClimateGate's Michael Mann Being Investigated

Political anti-global warming (US): Senator James Inhofe

Political pro-global warming (US): Senator Lugar Praises Pew Dialogue

Reason to not curse when doing a video interview (it’s at the end of the video, also, note to self: make sure to get a haircut)

More to come, this is fun stuff!

Computer Archeology: The Smiley, where did it come from?

SoCal Sam — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:16:47 GMT

The Smiley, where did it come from? Here is the first instance of the Smiley:

401298269,0,0 19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(

You can see the whole bboard file from CMU in 1982 at:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/mbj/smiley/bboard_contents.html

Funny stuff… Who says research has to be unfunny? :-)

F#: Ballistics, Rocketry and Research 5/7/2009

SoCal Sam — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:30:33 GMT

I just got back from the Foundation of Digital Games (FDG) Disney Cruise, and it WAS GREAT! I had great conversations with some of the best game researchers and professors on the planet, and we all couldn’t use our cell phones or do email without paying a bunch of money. ACM held the conference and the papers were awesome. They will be posted shortly, and I will definitely link to them. Then I went to the Imagine Cup US Nationals, and what a bunch of winning students!

Now I am looking forward to the Star Trek movie! (Hence the images, I got in the Webmaster program). WRT the Star Trek Movie, one of the things that I learned on the FDG Cruise was that Hollywood edit 194 of 196 movies using a Windows Based editor named Avid. I think that this is quite a bit different than I thought was used.

Taking a look at the Star Trek web site and I see it uses Flash, which is kind of 10 minutes ago, Silverlight is so much cooler. To use Flash, like they did on the Star Trek site, you are forced to use a modified version of javascript, which is the most boring actionscript created by Adobe. Using Silverlight I can use C#, F#, VB, VC++, IronPython, IronRuby, and when it comes out IronPHP, the resulting sites are much more robust. Silverlight works on Windows, Apple and some versions of Linux, inside of many of the browsers. Flash doesn’t always work in all of the browsers and just recently started working in most of the browsers. The games appear to be the typical Flash based games, which means they are static and not all that interesting. The Star Trek Movie web site is awesome even if it is held back by 20th century technology in the 21st century.

Let’s move on with the reading of the program by Chris Smith called BurnedLands, scroll down to F#: Ballistics, Rocketry and Research 4/12/2009 in this blog. Let’s face it, ballistics and rockets have to be understood before you get to view the Star Trek Physics. We are looking at the Math Module, if you have downloaded the code as well as the F# add-in for Visual Studio or the stand alone versions of F#, we are reviewing the Math.FS code, and just a few of the lines (that is: the following code won’t work by itself):

Today, it will be one line only, as I want to get this posted:

type Vector< [<Measure>] 'a>(x : float<'a>, y : float<'a>) =

type Vector< [<Measure>]

In F# types are:

Records: This is sum types are also referred to as union types
Tuples: These are a set of types composed to form a composite type similar to classes in C#

Vector

F# includes matrix and column vector types:

Matrix vector types are generic and use the form: Matrix<'a>
Column vector types, are generally used to describe direction and magnitude, they use the form: Vector<'a>

<[Measure] ‘a>

The Measure attribute tells F# that units kg, s and m aren't really types in the usual sense of the word, but are used to build units-of-measure.
In this case, the [Measure] is telling the compiler to check the units for correctness.
‘a is a type parameterization, a special process in F# where a type is not known, but it will match the value that is returned, as you read the line you see that the ‘a is turned to the type of Float. The purpose of this is to help the compiler to find more type errors at compile time and helps avoid casting.

(x : float<'a>, y : float<'a>) =

the variables x and y become the same variable type as ‘a

That’s it for today, for the next few posts, I will be discussing the new stuff that is coming out of Research.

Technorati Tags: F#,Star Trek,type Vectors,<Measure>

WTF: Orbital Mechanics/Celestial Mechanics, Newton and Kepler’s Laws

SoCal Sam — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:56:36 GMT

Apparently this cartoon was all to true with respect to the Mars Climate Orbiter. However, for some reason I am certain that there were no women wearing sexy pantsuits on the navigator team for the MCO. If I am wrong leave a comment.

Hi ho: Well like Tim Buxton said at the Mix09 keynote today, the transition is the important part of a design. MCO didn’t make the transition well. Let’s start with an analysis of the back story. Gravity and it’s impact on your life.

It all starts a long time ago, a really long time ago when gravity was created in our universe, which although most people think that I was around when that happened but I wasn’t. To start with my convoluted effort to pull in F# to simulating the orbital boo-boo that was the MCO, then we might do the Mars Polar Lander, likely though I will get bored with it all and move on to something else. So stick with me.

Gravity sucks.

The primary laws we will using are the Newton Laws of Motions and Kepler’s Laws

Newton formulated his laws for all objects, Kepler’s Laws were created for celestial bodies. So this is an example of the specialized laws such as Kepler’s Laws were passed on to someone else to create the generalized solutions. Of course, prior to Newton’s writing down of the laws, people had noticed things like a wagon rolling down hill was harder to stop than a wagon moving on flat land. Newton’s Laws of Motion quantified the observation in a way that was measurable and repeatable. There was something missing though, and that missing part was to be solved by Einstein, and won’t be discussed in this series of blogs, just because it is hard enough to do the simple stuff like planetary motion.

The laws are as follows:

Kepler Laws.

The Law of Orbits: All planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus.
The Law of Areas: A line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. (Also known as Conservation of Angular Momentum)
The Law of Periods: The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit. Also known as the Harmonic Law

Newton’s Laws of Motion

First Law of Motion

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it

Second Law of Motion

The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

Third Law of Motion

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Gravity, it’s the law!

Tomorrow, getting started with coding…

Technorati Tags: Kepler,Kepler Laws,Newton Laws of Motion,Orbital Mechanics,Celestial Mechanics,Mars Climate Orbiter

WTF#: Compelling demonstration

SoCal Sam — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:12:08 GMT

Email thread with my favorite manager today, we can’t agree if F# can make a compelling demo for an online talk. His criticism is correct, but I am sure I can do a compelling demo, unfortunately my favorite manager is often right, otherwise he is wrong. However, he has some experience he did a bunch of stuff with Iron Python, and I got to give him some points that he really gave it a shot. So he speaks from experience from my point of view.

I think that the burned lands demo is pretty good if I spiff it up, don’t know. Anybody got any ideas? Leave a comment. Be nice to work together on a demo that is compelling using F#. Not that I want to prove my manager wrong, I think that he would appreciate the collaboration.

Maybe something with XNA, Silverlight and then uses F# for the Physics, that would be cool. Better yet would it be possible to work with World of Warcraft? Nope, WOW uses Lua.

Any ideas?

Technorati Tags: F#,Demonstrations,Compelling

WTF#: World of Warcraft, VSLAB and a note that I have an awesome manager

SoCal Sam — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:09:52 GMT

First off, I wish to thank the folks who are commenting on this blog, but one complaint: Edgar Sánchez left a comment but his blog engine will not allow me to leave a contact for him.

A tool that you might want to consider utilizing for your experimentation with the F# language:

VSLab, a graphics tool, http://www.codeplex.com/vslab, if you do use it, make sure to give feedback on the site on how you used it, that is important to keep the product improving.

Now the question I have in mind is this: Can F# be used with World of Warcraft? Just kidding, sort of. My partner Kenny Spade and I are working on some demos around the use of World of Warcraft with Visual Studio. My manager was great about it, when I ask if I could buy the whole Warcraft system and everything, he went for it! Thanks boss.

So for now i am working on a World of Warcraft demonstration, and that might take a while, has anyone of my readers created code for WOW? Let me know. I think it would be funny to do some F# with WOW. Not that it is needed or useful, but it is interesting.

It helps that I have a review coming up that I can honestly say that my manager is pretty awesome! (And if you think I am kissing up, it is a pretty good bet he doesn’t read this blog, which is cool with me.)

Technorati Tags: F#,World of Warcraft,WOW,Games,Game design

WTF#: Syllabus for the rest of the students at a university, with a focus on Functional Programming

SoCal Sam — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:29:13 GMT

Information science and computer science pretty much control the programming classes and curriculum at the universities, colleges and trade schools. Most of the training is either to implement and manage systems or how to write programs and think about new problems and solutions. It is all good and needed, but what about the rest of the students?

In my thinking, I am just thinking about the students down the hall from computer science, the mechanical/aero/civil/electrical engineers. Much of what they do requires computations of some sort. Their research requires the use of computers, but is the approach currently recommended by the ACM and IEEE really fitting the bill?

Let’s say I am an electrical engineering student who is passionate about solving EMF problems related to the power curve utilization in the home. Here the power delivered by power companies is being polluted by the switching power supplies used by computers and battery chargers. That means that the AC power has all kinds of little spikes in it that changes the power distribution system in small ways.

Or I am a civil engineer that needs to do a hydrostatic simulation of drains in cities to determine the impact of gutter water on streams and ocean outlets. Or I am an aero that needs to do a simulation of a historical aircraft, like the airplane model that Einstein created while playing with his son Hans. Finally, what if I am a mechanical engineer that needs to do a dynamic stress analysis of a Ferrari automobile.

How do I as an engineering student get started with developing a program that doesn’t necessarily require MatLab or Mathematica? Or even be able to extend those excellent tools?

Java? C#? Visual Basic? Small Basic? Or a functional language that can do OOP when needed, like F#? What does a engineering student get motivated by? Having to write programs that conform to computer science protocols of code or problem domain? Or does the student need something that conforms more to their domain knowledge needs? What will these engineering students be doing with their domain knowledge when they go to work for the local utility firm, aerospace company, city permit desk or automotive design consultancy?

In the past functional languages such as FORTRAN, APL (A Programming Language), would be there to help with the early engineering student to help with the matrix calculations of matrixes larger than 4 by 4, and so forth. Today, the classes offered to these students may use a language like OCAML, which is the mother of F# where F# uses the light syntax of the OCAML language. These languages are prefect for the engineer, and F# is a play for both sides of the equation, in that it is both functional as well as object oriented.

In a well designed class for the engineers and scientists, the computer science students who also attend the class would have to sit through the way that the matrixes are used in math and engineering. But here is the trick: The engineers would be able to see the difference between the use of arrays and trees (something I always have problems with). So by making the modifications the students would be able to gain a more diverse way to use software to solve problems.

Technorati Tags: APL,FORTRAN,Martix Math,Binary Trees,Engineering

Silverlight games: Review of tutorials for Silverlight games

SoCal Sam — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:16:44 GMT

There is a fantastic tutorial out Anatomy of a Silverlight Game: Avoid Common Mistakes When Building Online Games, which is as up to date as you can find on the web. I have been going over a few of the tutorials and this is the best one I have encountered. Bill Reiss writes a good tutorial but it is somewhat out of date, and the flow breaks down a bit, but if you want to work through it, I found it useful.

For the most part the fact that Visual Web Developer 2008, the Express version of the ASP.NET tool in Visual Studio can work with Expression Blend 2 isn’t mentioned in most of these tutorials. This was a recent addition to the capabilities of the Visual Web Developer when you install the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SDK.

I am reviewing the Anatomy of a Silverlight Game, and right now it is very exciting. So take a look at it, and if it is the level of training you are looking for, stick with it, if it isn’t I am working to make it more consumable for everyone else! I believe that game design should be as easy as using a Word Processor, but for now it isn’t and I don’t have time to create that level of tool.

So please stay tuned as I build up a process for more people to understand and design games! Games: The future of storytelling

Technorati Tags: XNA,XNA Express,Fun,Games,Silverlight

F#: Re-Thinking the syllabus for training engineers and scientists in programming

SoCal Sam — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:44:30 GMT

Well continuing my effort to bring F# to the Engineers, one of the things that Engineering students look for is the move from graphing calculators to solving problems in a way that doesn’t require an expensive tool like MatLab or Mathematica, although both are excellent tools. When engineers leave school, it sometimes comes as a rude shock that the company they go to work for can’t afford the MatLab or Mathematica licenses.

First, don’t get me wrong, MatLab and Mathematica are great tools and later I am going to cover the use of F# with these important tools (if I can get a copy of one of them to work with).

Over the past 30 years I have been an Electrical Engineer, and Electrical Engineers are often trapped between the physics of the universe on one side, mechanical engineers on the other, then computer science on the opposite side. No one seems to understand the Electrical Engineer, it doesn’t help the Einstein’s equivalent of an undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering, that likely made it worse as the 20th century wore on. Mechanicals and Civil engineers have similar complaints, Computer Science seems to have a desire to exist to create and solve problems unique to the domain of the computer. And frankly they have done a great job of creating new technologies and jobs that employ 100’s of millions of people, so GOOD JOB Computer Scientists! But the engineering and science types need a little love too, which with imperative programming such as C#, Java is not really able to supply.

Let’s take a look at a situation that sits between electrical engineering and mechanical engineering: Control Systems. If I am designing a control system, I am not comfortable with object oriented software. If I am doing a simulation of a control system over a long period of time, imperative programming isn’t something that does me much good. Object Oriented programming is great for social networks, games, office applications, networks, but not for the control system simulation.

What is needed to excite the engineering students about programming? The physics student? Over the next few posts I will lay down some thoughts, and they will lead to functional programming with a dash of object oriented programming.

Do you have any thoughts on how a syllabus would look for non-CS students to get into programming?

Technorati Tags: F#,FSharp,Functional Programmning

Professors: Get No Cost software for your students

SoCal Sam — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:03:00 GMT

<\/embed><\/div>";" galleryimg="no" mce_src="http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/research/WindowsLiveWriter/ProfessorsGetFreesoftwareforyourstudents_8B81/video5590adc319f9.jpg">

Hey PROFESSORS of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Design: You can get no-cost Software for your students, labs and for your instructional use!

Check out this video to see all of the no-cost software available through the MSDNAA program, there may be a small subscription fee for your school to get this software. If you are a professor at a California Community College, PLEASE contact the foundation to get information on the MSDNAA subscription.

There are a lot of software, so take a look at the video for the full list of software products. The easy and short way to say how much software is in the MSDNAA subscription:

Almost everything Microsoft creates, except for MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint is included in the MSDNAA subscription.

Technorati Tags: MSDNAA,Engineering,Science,Research

WTF#: Curriculum for F# part 1, thinking about curriculum for CS

SoCal Sam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:56:46 GMT

No picture today, the Community server didn’t want to host it.

What the F#, umm, does that work? Oh well, I’ll stick with it for awhile. After all blogs like this are not broadly read, so I figure I can talk about anything I want to. Ok, on to curriculum and pedagogical discussions:

So what should a curriculum for a class that uses F# look like?
Should it be curriculum for Computer Scientists or can a new path be adopted?
If a new path is adopted then will it be accepted?
Should I care if it is accepted? (Answer: Yes)

After all, I have read most of Minsky’s papers and posts over the past 50 YEARS and he doesn’t seem to really care what other people think. Of course, he is a tenured professor and I have to think about profit and audience.

So what would be a source for representative curriculum? OCAML classes come to mind, the excellent work done at UCSD on OCAML might be a good source, but on thinking about it, why? F# and OCAML are very similar except that F# is tied to the .NET Framework and OCAML isn’t, the Light Syntax is the same.

But what about the structure of the class, if the market is to be engineers and scientist does the class have to be difficult, or should it be a fun way to re-attract the students to programming? A honeypot would be a class that is fun and informative, with an eye to the student getting a very positive experience out of the classroom.

In starting my curriculum development, I will review the “Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design[i]”. Although neither F# or OCAML was designed to be a first language, for engineers and scientists, it might very well be the only programming language this group of students will deal with in the future. The domain knowledge for engineers and scientists, not to mention the large load of “general education” in the US, means that the undergraduate engineering and science students may only have one programming classes at many schools. So in developing the curriculum the rules in the Seven Deadly Sins need to be avoided.

1. Less is More:

Much of the problem solving that students do in the real world is procedural

2. More is More:

“..syntax vs semantics, static vs dynamic structure, process vs data, puts a big cognitive load on the student….”

3. Grammatical traps:

“…confusing syntactic and semantic constructs which are present in most introductory languages…”

4. Hardware dependence:

”… novice programmer is often forced to contend simultaneously with the constraints of the underlying hardware…”

5. Backwards Compatibility: “

…languages which attempt a significant degree of historical consistency inevitably perpetuate some problematical constructs.

6. Excessive Cleverness:

“…some languages (ABC, Haskell and Python, for instance) use indentation to specify scope. This eliminates the need for grouping constructs...”

7. Violations of Expectations:

In this case the beginning programming language may do something that is not expected or uses a non-institutive rule such as always sorting lists upon input or violating semantic rules

In a future post I will review how these rules impact F#, which could be a great first programming language for non-CS, the bulk of the rest of students would clearly benefit from a functional language similar to F#.

The big question is this: How do you motivate the students who only want the programming language to solve domain problems and aren’t into the programming for programming sake?

Technorati Tags: XNA,research,curriculum,first programming language

[i] Conway, D. and McIver, L. Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design. Department of Computer Science, Monash University. <http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/PDF/SevenDeadlySins.pdf>.

Conway, D. and McIver, L. Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design. Department of Computer Science, Monash University. <http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/PDF/SevenDeadlySins.pdf>.

Building a Microsoft Speech Server using a VPC

SoCal Sam — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Moved this blog entry to the following URL:

http://blogs.msdn.com/socal-sam/archive/2009/01/30/building-a-microsoft-speech-server-using-a-vpc.aspx

Checking out the Microsoft Speech Server

SoCal Sam — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:02:00 GMT

This blog has been moved to the following blog. Why? I decided that I want to reactivate my Software Engineering Blog and this is fitting. If you came here from DevSchool, I will make changes on that blog as well...

http://blogs.msdn.com/socal-sam/archive/2009/01/30/checking-out-the-microsoft-speech-server.aspx

F#, Imperative Languages and Identifiers

SoCal Sam — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:21:38 GMT

OMG! I got pulled off my usual job of doing a bunch of things and have been focused on getting students involved in the Imagine Cup Software Design Invitational in the United States. Then it was Christmas and I ate to many cookies, etc. Finally I ignored my one comment from a int19h, and when you get as few comments as I do, everyone is precious!

Int19h ask about my previous blog:

"This is one of the differences between functional programming (F#, OCAML) and imperative programming (C#, VB.NET, Java), the concept of identifiers is not really supported in the imperative languages, although there are constants.
Can you explain what you mean by "the concept of identifiers is not supported"? Try as I might, I cannot parse this in such a way as to produce some meaning."

Fair enough int19h, just what in the heck was I saying? Well, if I had wrote my next blog on the day I thought about it, instead of focusing like a laser on getting the students involved with Imagine Cup (hopefully my manager is reading that!). The concept of the identifier in F# could be explained with this quote from Chris Smith's blog entry, F# in 20 Minutes:

"...using the term ‘value’ to refer to identifiers rather than ‘variable’. The reason for this is that types in F# are immutable by default, meaning that once they are created they cannot be changed. This may seem like a severe limitation, but immutability actually prevents some classes of bugs. In addition, immutable data is inherently thread safe meaning you don’t need to worry about sync locks in order to make your code parallelizeable."

What is an "Identifier"? Identifiers give names to values in F# for reference later in a program. You would use the keyword 'let', in the following manner, no semi-colon:

let x = 15

When a value is assigned to an identifier, it never changes in a functional program. The style is to refer to this construct as identifiers and not variables, see the book "Foundations of F#", by Robert Pickering.

Functions and Values in F# are treated exactly the same, also, functions in F# supports passing less arguments than the function supports, which is referred to as partial or curried functions. For more information on this see this excellent Podwyski's blog entry.

Are you interested in loading up F# and Visual Studio but don't want to buy or load the full version of Visual Studio? This is a great way to learn about the Visual Studio Shell and to get started with F#, if you have VS Pro or VS team system, then you only need to load up F#, unless you want to add Visual Studio Shell to your development tools, go ahead and load it.

First download and install the Visual Studio Shell:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) Redistributable Package

Then download and install F# CTP:

Microsoft F#, September 2008 Community Technology Preview

Have fun, make sure to check out the various blogs out there, so much good stuff, so little time!