Welcome to F# Weekly,

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• F# projects on Google Summer of Code.
• Ross McKinlay proposed an idea for new Type Provider.
• Learn how F# is central to Microsoft’s ground-breaking Quantum Algorithms research.

• F#-based quantum algorithms simulator presented at Niels Bohr Institute last week

• A very early public beta release of Tsunami IDE is available now.

Videos/Presentations

• “Domain-driven design with F# and EventStore” by Lev Gorodinski.
• “F# for Trading” by Phillip Trelford.
• FP Days Cambridge 2012 Content on InfoQ.

Blogs

• Phil Trelford posted “Examples!“.
• Jack Pappas shared “How to use the fsharp REPL when debugging C# code in Visual Studio“.
• Colin Bull wrote about “Option Operators“.
• Mathias Brandewinder blogged “Recommendation Engine using Math.NET, SVD and F#“(!!!super hot!!!)
• Lev Gorodinski wrote “Domain-Driven Design (DDD) With F# – Validation“.
• TechRepublic posted “CodePaLOUsa: Humanitarian Toolbox, F#, open source licensing, happiness“.
• Marko Apfel introduced “SharpDevelop, F#, missing “Send to F# Interactive” context menu“.
• Anton Kropp wrote “Capturing union values with fparsec“.
• Don Syme blogged “IEEE Computer Society Webinar: Try F# for Big and Broad Data – Tuesday May 7“.
• Richard Dalton wrote “Learning To Think Functionally: Back To Basics“.
• Anton Kropp posted “The largest mass problem“.
• Gene Belitski shared “If Google would be looking to hire F# programmers – part3“.

• Gene Belitski shared “If Google would be looking to hire F# programmers – part4“.

• Mike Harris blogged “Philosophy of Programming“.
• Dave Thomas posted “I Node Something (Bout You)“.

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #17

Welcome to F# Weekly,

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• F# community on Google+.
• Fantomas is moving fast: web project is ready and VS add-in is in progress.
• Taha Hachana presented F# syntax highlighting tool.
• Google+ discussion on an F# Resharper plugin.
• Benchmarking F# async http proxy on Mono on Azure.
• “Integrating stock data into the F# language” is new to F# Deep Dives.

Videos

• “Mono, Open Source, Visual Studio, and Xamarin” by Miguel de Icaza.
• “F# embedded in Excel“(part 1 and part 2) by Matt Moloney and Adam Mlocek. (slides)
• “F# MVC for WPF” by Dmitry Morozov. (slides)
• “MathSharp turn MathML into code” by ActiveMesa.
• “Reasonable codewithfsharp” slides by Michael Falanga

Blogs

• John Liao posted “Exploring Riak with F#“.
• Visual Studio Magazine posted “iOS Development with Xamarin.iOS and Visual Studio“.
• Gene Belitski presented “A Tale of Two Functions“.
• Bryan Edds wrote “Aml – A Modular Language written in F# and available for .NET“.
• Mike Harris shared “Finding Perfect Numbers“.
• Sergey Tihon announced “New selectors with Canopy 0.7.3“.
• Anton Kropp wrote “A response to “Ten reasons to not use a functional programming language”“.
• Don Syme blogged “F# and QuantLib: An Introduction“.
• Hao Lian posted “Dive into parser combinators: parsing search queries with F# and FParsec in Kiln“.
• Gene

  Belitski shared “If Google would be looking to hire F# programmers – part1“.

• Gene

  Belitski shared “If Google would be looking to hire F# programmers – part2“.

• Taha Hachana wrote “Fantomas support in the Tsunami IDE“.
• Don Syme blogged “Miguel de Icaza discusses Xamarin support for F# on Channel 9“.
• Sergey Tihon posted “Neo4jClient new Cypher Start notation & F# Extra Top Level Operators“.
• John Liao shared “Exploring Riak with F# and CorrugatedIron“.
• Phil Trelford wrote “Foq It Easy“.
• InfoQ published “Develop Financial Applications with F# and QuantLib“.
• Sergey Tihon blogged “WPF MVVM with Xaml Type Provider“.
• Ashley Nathan Feniello posted “Memoization“.
• Richard Dalton wrote “Learning To Think Functionally – Stuck“.
• Phil Trelford shared “Fractal Zoom in Colour“.
• Mike Harris posted “Primality by Trial Division OR TDD Example in F# using FsUnit“.

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #16

Welcome to F# Weekly,

The greatest event of the past week is Xamarin EVOLVE 2013 Conference where official support of F# as a first class language was announced.  It is a great step forward for F# mobile development. Download Xamarin Studio and try it right now!

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• Xamarin supports F# as a first class language.
• Good repository of F# implementation of “Purely functional data structures”.
• Fantomas, the source code formatter for F# with detailed formatting guides, was announced.
• Pacman in F# on iPad & iPhone from Neil Danson using CocoaTouch runs in Xamarin Studio.
• New options of using F# for iOS and Android development were published.
• If you want to sign up as a founding member of http://fsharp.org, email fsharp[at]fsharp[dot]org, or send a pull request to fsfoundation.
• Become an open source hero and add Fantomas code formatting support to the F# binding in Xamarin Studio.
• TahaHachana announced a prototype of an online F# code formatter powered by Fantomas and WebSharper.
• Dave Thomas presented a new F# iOS samples repo.
• Kunjan Dalal published a demo of F# ServiceStack service that running on Heroku. (source code)
• There is a new interesting discussion on benchmarking data structures specific to F#.

Videos

• “Visualize World Bank data in R with F# Type Providers” by Mathias Brandewinder.
  
• “Tsunami Excel with UDFs” by Tsunami IDE.
• “F# Experiences & Perspectives” by Dmitri Nesteruk.
• “Getting Started with F#” by Rachel Reese.
• “F# Pacman on iPhone with Xamarin Studio” by Phillip Trelford.
• “VimSpeak Demo” by Ashley Feniello.

Blogs

• Mathias Brandewinder wrote “Visualize WorldBank data with R and F# Type Providers“.
• Mike Harris posted “Don’t Mind the Gap“.
• Tomas Petricek blogged “Async in C# and F#: Asynchronous gotchas in C#“.
• Akash Chopra wrote “Shrink, Script, Shape“.
• Sergey Tihon posted “Explore local network with F# Async Workflows“.
• Jerome Laban wrote about “Cancellation with Async F#, C# and the Reactive Extensions“.
• Anh-Dung Phan wrote “Developing a source code formatter for F#“.
• Sergey Tihon blogged “DNS collisions detection with F# Async Workflows“.
• Dave Thomas posted “A Little Bit of iOS Async“.
• Dave Thomas posted “iOS Async Revisited“.
• Toshihiro Nakamura shared “Web API in a F#-way“.
• Don Syme blogged “F# + GPGPU – Financial Services Developer Forum (.NET in the City) – Thursday 16th May 2013“

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #15

Welcome to F# Weekly,

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• Gustavo Guerra released “LearnOnTheGo” – Windows Phones App for Coursera.
• Tomas Petricek shared source code of an F# wrapper for gnuplot charting library. Be free to improve it!
• New Canopy web site with documentation was released (and new Canopy 0.7.2).
• Shared new WebSharper custom twitter widget for F#. (by Taha Hachana)
• Kaggle use F# for their data analysis tools and more.
• Read how GameSys are using F# for server-side programming to support millions of active mobile and social game users.
• A first cut at the fsharp.org  page about using F# for machine learning. Please contribute.
• An initial fsharp.org  page about data access with F#. Please contribute.
• Alea.cuBase 1.1 Preview 1 (1.1.467) released!
• 16 minutes from bug report to deployed fix by the F# community. Now that’s service!
• MathNET Numerics v2.5 was released, should resolve quite a few issues, better performance and F# support!
• Released backports of .NET 4.5 IReadOnly* interfaces.

Blogs

• Mike Harris posted “On CPS – Part 2“.
• Yan Cui blogged “Be Lazy, but be ware of initialization exception“.
• Steffen Forkmann wrote “Stati-C/AL Prism – Static analysis for Microsoft Dynamics NAV reloaded“.
• Anton Kropp shared “Capturing mutables in F#“.
• Sergey Tihon blogged “F# Exception Formatter“.
• Don Syme wrote “Learn F# in New York – Fast Track to F# with Tomas Petricek, 30 April – 1 May“.
• Loic Denuziere posted  “WebGL and glMatrix Extensions for WebSharper Released“.
• Don Syme shared “Learn F# – Hands On: This Thursday, London F# Meetup“.
• Sergey Tihon wrote about “F# null trick“.
• Heather Cynede posted “F# : OpenShark“.
• Mr. D wrote about “First hand experience with F#“.
• Richard Dalton posted “C# is too damn noisy“.
• Matthew Adams blogged “Which programming languages should I learn: Beginners Edition“.
• Daniel Mohl shared Presentation – Modern Software Architectures: Building Solutions for Web, Cloud, and Mobile“.
• Visual Studio FSharp Team posted “An Update to the F# Microsoft Dynamics CRM Type Provider Sample“.
• “Ten reasons NOT to use a statically typed functional programming language“.
• Taha Hachana shared “Native Drag and Drop with WebSharper“.
• Sergey Tihon reblogged “Running F# Interactive from Windows context menu“.
• Faisal Waris wrote “Visualizing a Schedule using F# and the .Net Visualization Library“.

Pingback to the past:

• “Equality and Comparison Constraints in F#” by Don Syme.
  
• “F# async on the server side” by Brian.
• F# Metaprogramming series by Gene Belitski:
  • F# Metaprogramming part 1: JIT Some Native Code on the Fly
  • F# Metaprogramming part 2: Dynamic synthesis of executable F# code
  • F# Metaprogramming part 3: Creating MSIL on the Fly

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #14

Welcome to F# Weekly,

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• IT University Copenhagen choose F# for their undergraduate functional programming course.
• “Testimonials and Quotes” section was announced on F# Software Foundation site.
• Supervision project was announced (F# for Static Analysis).
• A couple of F# bug fixes for portable libraries were rolled out with VS2012 Update 2.
• “Why F#” inspired the girl to try F#!
• List of F# User Groups was published.
• A new option was added to “Use F# on Windows” list.
• Handelsbanken (approx $400B assets) use F# for counter-party risk analysis.

Video

• “T2: A Temporal Property Verifier in F#” by Heidy Khlaaf.
• “TDD and BDD in F#” by Phil Trelford & Zach Bray.
• “F# Experiences & Perspectives” by Dmitri Nesteruk.
• “Supervision: Static Analysis for Microsofts Dynamics NAV” by Bent Rasmussen and Christian Clausen.
• “Day Trading With Tsunami” by Tsunami IDE.

Blogs

• Suzanna posted “AdaBooster in FSharp“.
• Saxon Matt posted “Adopting F#, Part II“.
• Jack Fox wrote “The Fastest Functional Data Structures Come to F#“.
• Saxon Matt published “Code Comparison: C# v.s. F#“.
• Yan Cui published “Sorting Algorithms in F#“.
• Akash Chopra wrote about “F# Testing DSL Part 3“.
• Anton Tayanovskyy posted “Introducing FAKE boot workflow“.
• Ash posted “Running F#, Nancy on heroku“.
• Heather wrote “F# unicode in action“.
• Jeremie Chassaing posted “C# Static interfaces – Take 3“.
• Steffen Forkmann blogged “A tale of nulls – part I“.
• Steffen Forkmann posted “Stati-C/AL Supervision – blazing-fast static analysis for Microsoft Dynamics NAV“.
• Don Syme blogged “The F# Weekly #13“.
• Don Syme posted “Stati-C/AL Supervision – static analysis for Microsoft Dynamics NAV“.
• Don Syme wrote about “F# testimonials on fsharp.org“.

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #13

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

– “What can C# do that F# cannot?”
-“NullReferenceException :-)”
Tomas Petricek.

Welcome to F# Weekly,

Using this weekly, I would like  to introduce Nando de Freitas for everyone who interested in machine learning. He is a machine learning professor at UBC. He has an excellent YouTube channel with lots of interesting lectures. Follow him if you are  interested.

A roundup of F# content from this past week:

News

• If you want F# support in Azure Mobile Services, please vote.
• Functional Programming course with materials in OCaml & F#.
• F# 3.0.25 is available on FreeBSD.
• An interesting discussion: how much should MS support/advocate F#?
• Meet Mac CorePlot bindings for Mono( F#-only) by Natallie Baikevich.
• Announce of FsMachines – A stream processing library for F#.
• Sequence verification support & quick method setup was included into Foq 0.9.
• Completion via menus in F# Emacs is coming soon to a package repository near you.
• A great answer to the question: “When should you use (or not) Math.NET  linear algebra?“.
• WebSharper.Google.Maps extension is an open source now.
• F# Notebook supports TEX equations and publishing from now.
• MbUnit.FSharp was released on NuGet.
• Extending async with await on tasks was published.
• Playing with the regObs OData API using F#.
• “F# needs an Akka. Fakka anyone?“

Videos

• Richard Broida talks on Asynchronous Programming with C#, VB.NET and F# at Bennett Adelson .NET SIG.
• “Excel-Funky-Functions-With-Tsunami” by Mathias Brandewinder.
• “F#, Type Providers, Functional and Reactive Programming” by Tomas Petricek.
• “Deploying Web Apps to the Cloud (Part 1)” by Tsunami IDE.
• Adam Granicz (Intellifactory) @ MLOC.JS

Blogs

• Jack Fox posted “F#: Already Engineered for Testability“.
• Mike Harris wrote about “Letter Occurrence“.
• Anton Tayanovskyy published “Automate, automate, automate..“.
• Taha Hachana shared “Canvas Drawing With WebSharper” with online demo.
• Simon Cousins blogged “JSON Converter for F# Map Type“.
• Adil Akhter wrote “UVa 136. Ugly Numbers“.
• Loic Denuziere announced “New FPish feature: E-mail notification“.
• Ryan Riley blogged “Web API and Dynamic Data Access“.
• Sergey Tihon published ““Why F#?” by F# Weekly“.
• Don Syme posted “Asynchronous Programming: From F# to Python“.

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

Previous F# Weekly edition – #11

“To be, or not to be”
William Shakespeare

Why people choose F#?  This is actually an interesting question. Everyone, who does not use it yet, should find a reason that will force him to try F# or even start use it in production. New posts like ‘Why F#’ have begun to appear more often. It is a good time to collect all thoughts in one  post and give a way to think about F# one more time.

The latest thoughts about F#:

1. “Does the language you choose make a difference?” by Simon Cousins.
2. “F# end to end” by Colin Bull.
3. “Why bugs don’t like F#” by Simon Cousins.
4. “Why F#?” by Dave Fancher. (Hacker News)
5. “F#: Already Engineered for Testability” by Jack Fox.
6. “Using F# for teching” by F# Software Foundation.
7. “Why use F#?” by FsharpForFunAndProfit.com

Pay attention to the publishing date – things might have changed.

A little bit earlier thoughts:

1. “Why F# is the language for data mining” by Yin Zhu.
2. “Why F#? with Richard Minerich and Phillip Trelford” by Scott Hanselman.
3. “Microsoft’s F#: 10 Reasons Why It’s a Hot Programming Language for Developers” by eWeek.
4. “F# is Greater than C#” by Aaron Erickson.
5. “Why F#?” by Richard Minerich.
6. “The Unheralded Benefits of the F# Programming Language” by Aaron Erickson
7. “F# in the Enterprise” by Visual F# Team.
8. “F# in the Enterprise” by Simon Cousins.
9. “Nine reasons to use F#” by Brian.
10. “Why not F#?” by Fredrik Holmstrom.
11. “Why F#?” by Joel Pobar.
12. “Why F#?” by Mike James.
13. “Why F# *ROCKS!*” by M. David Peterson.
14. “Why F#?” by Carey Cilyok.
15. “Why F#” by 2#4u.

Some discussions:

1. Why F# Why Not C#?
   
2. Why should I use F#?
3. When & Where do we use F#?
4. Why is F# so special?
5. In what areas might the use of F# be more appropriate than C#?
6. What are the benefits of using C# vs F# or F# vs C#?
7. Anyone Actually Using F# in Production?
8. What’s wrong with F#?
9. What is the case against F#?
10. Why should a .net developer learn F#?

If you still do not use F#, it is a good time to read stories from the others and think one more time.

P.S. If you know any other interesting posts/discussions about why people like or dislike F#, please, leave a link in comments. Thanks.