I was just looking to get the newest stuff to install in a new VM, and found myself very confused by the various ways of getting hold of Code Contracts. So, there are two different places where downloads are provided: the Microsoft Research download page via their Code Contracts page and the DevLabs page that is linked from there. According to the info on these pages, the DevLabs packages come with a commercial license, while the others have an Academic License that I haven’t looked into. So fa …
When I was at DevDays in The Hague last month, all my talks were recorded. Until now I wasn’t aware that something was actually going to happen with these recordings :-) Now the first one of them has been published on Channel 9, here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Taking-Efficiency-One-Step-Further-FSharp/
I’m wondering if my FP in C# talk will also be published - while I was there, that one seemed to be the most popular one I did. I’ll ask!
Update: Apparently all presentations …
Yesterday I recorded a video at TechEd about Functional Programming in C#, together with my colleague Gary Short. It’s up on the site now: Functional Programming in C#.
Unfortunately, the quality of the code demo in the video isn’t that great, my apologies for that. I’m not even going to go into what they made me do to the Apple logo on my laptop :-) The info at the end of the video is supposed to read something like this: Oliver Sturm / DevExpress olivers@devexpress.com — oliver@sturmnet.org …
I’ll be traveling down to London tomorrow for DevWeek 2009, where I’m going to do a workshop on F# on Monday and a few sessions on C# and F# on Thursday. Are you going to DevWeek? Are you going to be in London over the next few days? If you want to meet up, just let me know and I’m sure we can work something out! I’ll be twittering while I’m there, so following me on Twitter will be a good way of finding out where I am, if you fancy joining me for a pi …
As many of you have probably heard at some conference already, I have recently started writing a book for Wrox on “Functional Programming in C#“. I’ll try to blog about the topic a bit more, though I find myself not blogging very much at the moment… too much stuff to do. Anyway, I sat down with Keith and Woody at PDC this year and recorded a podcast on FP in C# — well, on some of the basics at least. If you’re interested, here it is:
Episode #23: Functional Programming in C# with Oliver Stu… …
If you’re a developer, you know the feeling - and if you’re not, I’m sure you can imagine it: you have just written the most amazing little piece of code, and nobody is there to kiss your feet, praise some deity for your existence and generally worship you in the way you deserve. I set out to solve this problem by creating a DXCore plugin for Visual Studio. DXCore is a fantastic product to help you bring round Visual Studio to your point of view, in this case by making it a …
Editor’s note: In case you’re reading this in 2019, like I recently did, it should be pointed out that this opinion piece was written in the early days of F#. The language has since evolved in a variety of ways, which is not to say that the problems described below are necessarily solved today — but the position of F# in the landscape of .NET languages is now clearer than it was and I don’t agree anymore with the proposals I made in 2008.
In my continuing efforts to make XPO work fully wi …
The next problem I found in my efforts to make XPO work with F# is documented here: Null values for F# classes — basically, I can’t just set a variable that has a reference to another object to null in F#.
The general assumption in F# is that null values are a threat and so the languages discourages their use. I totally see the point and if all I wanted to do was create classes (or perhaps not even those) for use in F# itself, I wouldn’t have a problem with it — but interop is an important t …