Luke Hoban has a very nice blog entry that shows an implementation of Huffman Coding with F#. This not only shows of F# as an algorithmic problem-solving language, but, just as importantly, shows just how elegant and smooth it is to take this code and produce a .NET object-oriented component that encapsulates a Huffman encoder for use from other .NET … Continue reading From Script to .NET Component: Huffman Coding with F# →

These are the full release notes for F# 1.9.4. The download link is on the main announcement page. We'll also use this page to note known issues with the release as we find them.   Summary   Language Symmetric Operator Overloading Additional nullness checking 'base' variables must now be called 'base'. Intrinsic members take predence … Continue reading Detailed Release Notes for F# 1.9.4 →

 [ Note: we have made a minor update to 1.9.4 called 1.9.4.19. The download links below point to this release. If you need 1.9.4.17 go to our downloads page. ]    [ Note: download links updated to point to the MSI correctly ]   We're very glad to announce the release of F# 1.9.4, the Spring Refresh of F#, uploaded … Continue reading F# 1.9.4 Now Available: Making F# Simpler and More Consistent →

Over the last few months the F# team has been diving deep into the technical work needed to productize F#. In this post I'd like to give a bit of a picture for what that means and how the team has been ramping up on our work. Firstly, the team! In Cambridge we have myself and James Margetson, … Continue reading Tackling the F# Productization →

Hi all, An update to the F# 1.9.3 release has been posted to the Microsoft Research Downloads site. Additional changes between1.9.3.7 and 1.9.3.14 are: Constructed classes may now be mutually recursive with other types, fixing an incompletness in the language implementation The Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Func module is deprecated (this contained a few rarely used functions related to … Continue reading Update to the F# 1.9.3 Release →

I'm glad to say that a release candidate for  F# 1.9.3 is now available (download via main post). The changes up to 1.9.3.7 are documented further below. Additional changes between1.9.3.7 and 1.9.3.14 are: Constructed classes may now be mutually recursive with other types, fixing an incompletness in the language implementation Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Func module is deprecated (this … Continue reading Full Release Notes for F# 1.9.3.7 and 1.9.3.14 →

[ Update: The release candidate has been updated to F# 1.9.3.14. The additional changes are documented with the release notes below ] I'm very glad to say that an updated release candidate for  F# 1.9.3 is now available (MSI, ZIP). This is F# 1.9.3.14. Here are the full release notes for 1.9.3.14. This is primarily a stabilization … Continue reading F# 1.9.3 Candidate Release Now Available! →

I've just arrived in Barcelona, for TechEd Developers. What an event! First, on the product side, there are just so many great things going on: Visual Studio 2008 is on show, the Microsoft Sync Framework has been announced, the ultra-cool Popfly shows how non-traditional development can be on the client side, as well as the host of … Continue reading F# At TechEd Developers in Barcelona →

The F# team is hiring! This position is for a QA engineer on the F# team. From the Microsoft website: We are looking for an experienced Software Design Engineer in Test to work on testing the F# language and compiler. Opportunities include working with some of the brightest minds in the community on the latest … Continue reading Software Development Engineer in Test: Position on the F# Team →

The F# team are hiring! We have two positions open right now. The first is a software development engineer specializing in Visual Studio.  We’re looking for an exceptional developer to work on integration with the Visual Studio editor and debugger, and with Technical Computing libraries. You will be a key designer/engineer on our team, responsible … Continue reading Software Development Engineer Position on the F# Team →

At last! We've finally sent off the very last proofs of Expert F# to Apress - this time the index, TOC etc. Adam, Antonio and myself are grateful to have Erik Meijer writing the foreword for us, and Apress are dealing with the small metter of putting everything on paper and getting it shipped to … Continue reading Expert F# Available by end of November! →

Today is an exciting day for the F# team. The Corporate VP for the Microsoft Developer Division, S. Somasegar, has announced the formation of a team to take F# forward. This will be a partnership with the current F# team at Microsoft Research. This is a huge step for us and we believe a great step forward … Continue reading S. Somasegar on taking F# forward →

Robert Pickering has been very busy of late. In two recent blog entries he's described An MSBuild provider for F# (more on MSBuild here) A protoype of an F# mode for #Develop (more on #Develop/SharpDevelop here) Good work, Robert!

F# 1.9 is seeing the rollout of a number of additions to the F# language, and this is the first of a series of blog entries on these.  For starters, the 1.9.2 release has seen the addition of "use" bindings. Here is a simple example:     let writePlayList() =         use outp = File.CreateText(@"playlist.txt")     … Continue reading Introducing “use” bindings in F# 1.9.2 →

Here are the full release notes for F# 1.9.2.7. Slicing syntax The following syntax forms     expr := ...           | e1.[range1]           | e1.[range1,range2]       range := e2..e3            | ..e3            | e2..            | * represent slicing from a 1D or 2D data structures that supports associative lookup on ordered keys. In … Continue reading Full Release Notes for F# 1.9.2.7 →

[ Update: F# 1.9.3 has been posted, and we don't expect any more 1.9.2 releases. ] [ Update: the F# samples got dropped from this release - we'll be fixing that this week ] [ Update: Granville has just posted a blog entry on how to get this version installing on Orcas Beta2 ] [ … Continue reading F# 1.9.2.7 released! →

I'm glad to report that Robert Pickering's book Foundations of F# will be out soon. I'll be writing more on this soon - it was a pleasure to work with Robert and Jim Huddleston as technical editor on this book, and I'm sure you will find it a great entry-level introduction to F# programming. Speaking … Continue reading F# Books, and F#/XAML →

F# 1.9.1.9 includes an addition that can substantially simplify F# numeric code. This provides a solution for a problem that has been present in F# programming from the start, but is not present in many other languages. In particular, the functions int, float, float32 etc. are now defined as overloaded conversion operators. For example, you can replace … Continue reading More on the overloaded conversion operators in 1.9.1.9 →

Hi all, I'm glad to announce the availability of F# 1.9.1.9. It's available for download from this link: http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/details/c8d270ce-dc93-4b82-8125-2c57036520b3/details.aspx This is in general a bug fix release over 1.9.1.8, with some exceptions We've added two great new features: Overloaded numeric conversion functions. The functions int, float, float32 etc. now overloaded conversion operators. For example, you can … Continue reading F# 1.9.1.9 available (currently MSI only): Includes overloaded numeric conversion functions and checked arithmetic →

  On hubFS AndyMan has recently announced "Hardware Design F#", HDFS, Version 0.2, based on a port of HDCaml, by Tom Hawkins, though rapidly acquiring a life of its own.  I blogged about version 0.1 a while back. Here are his release highlights:   The project has moved home. Now at  http://code.google.com/p/hdfs/ and  http://groups.google.com/group/hdfsharp Revised circuit design API.  Where … Continue reading HDFS – Hardware Design Using F#, version 0.2 →

I'm glad to announce the availability of a draft paper on F# Active Patterns, co-authored with James Margetson and Gregory Neverov.  I've included the draft as an attachment to this post. In the paper we cover How we combine total, partial and parameterized active patterns in one unified mechanism Examples of using active patterns to … Continue reading Draft Paper on F# Active Patterns →

[ Note: An update to this release has been announced: see version 1.9.1.9 at http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2007/05/06/f-1-9-1-9-available-currently-msi-only-includes-overloaded-numeric-conversion-functions-and-checked-arithmetic.aspx %5D I am very pleased to announce that F# 1.9.1 is now available for download. This is a major release for us, a first step toward F# 2.0, and incorporating two exiciting new features: Active Patterns and Implicit Class Construction. The … Continue reading F# 1.9.1.8 Released! →

  I’m pleased to announce that F# 1.1.13 has been released. The original release announcement is here. You can download this release from http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/release.aspx . A summary of the changes in this release is given below (in some cases these updating the changes in the README-fsharp.html from the distribution)   Enjoy!   Don and James … Continue reading F# 1.1.13 detailed release notes →

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Mike Hall and a DV Camera for an hour, the end result being two F# videos/interviews recently posted on Channel 9. There are two parts:                   Interview by Mike Hall                 The F# WebCrawler and DirectX demos   Thanks to Damien Watkins for arranging this :-)  

  [ Note: this post is now out-of-date: drafts of Chapters 2-7 are now available ]    I'm very glad to announce the availability of an early draft of Chapter 2 of a book on F# which I'm currently in the process of co-authoring.  The projected title of the book is, unabashedly, "Expert F#". This is one of two F# books planned … Continue reading Draft Chapter 2 of “Expert F#”: Essential Language Features →

Detailed release notes for 1.1.12.3   Collected changes between v1.1.11.12 and 1.1.12.3 Lightweight syntax option. Are you sick of writing in? The #light option makes the use of certain keywords such as in optional by using indentation. See the informal language specification for details, as well as the ConcurrentLife sample and the Samples101 tutorial. Enable … Continue reading Detailed release notes for 1.1.12.3 →

We're glad to announce that F# 1.1.12.3 supports the optional use of lightweight syntax through the use of whitespace to make indentation significant.  At the time of this release this is an experimental feature, though it is assumed that its use will become widespread. The F# indentation-aware syntax option is a conservative extension of the … Continue reading Lightweight syntax option in F# 1.1.12.3 →

We're very pleased to announce that F# 1.1.12 is available for download. (note: since the time of writing this has been updated to F# 1.1.12.5) This release incorporates a significant number of minor improvements combined with two new features: a lightweight syntax option and a feature called Active Patterns.   Both are considered "beta" features: minor changes … Continue reading F# 1.1.12 now released! →

Greg Neverov (inventor of the C# dialect Metaphor and an intern at MSR Cambridge this summer) has been working on an experimental new language feature called "active patterns".  This topic has come up on The Hub, so I thought I would mention a bit about it here, though I will only be able to give a brief taste … Continue reading An upcoming experimental feature: Active Patterns in F# →

The Microsoft MVP Tomas Petricek has been continuing his exploration of F# LINQ-style quotations to implement a first cut at an F# CodeDom provider, with a view to building entire web applications in F# alone.  He's posted a blog entry on The Hub (n.b. you currently have to register with The Hub for this entry): I was recently … Continue reading On The Hub: F# and ASP.NET 2.0 (CodeDom provider) →

Ralf Herbrich is a co-leader of MSR Cambridge's Applied Games Group, which specializes in using machine learning techniques such as TrueSkill to improve the player experience of XBox Live and other applications.  He's now also an F# user and advocate, having recently succesfully used F# to rapidly perform new, experimental analysis of masses of new … Continue reading F# for games and machine learning: .NET + performance + scripting →

The text of this post is also available as an article, which I'll modify with latest material on this topic as time goes on. As of version 1.1.10, F# now supports first-class, composable events. Here 'events' is used in the same sense as in the C# language, but you'll notice some important differences in how events … Continue reading F# First Class Events: Simplicity and Compositionality in Imperative Reactive Programming →