.NET F#
Links to F# content.
I'm no longer blogging on this blog. Please find me here.
It must be something in the water. I have been evangelizing F# for some time and have had numerous invitations to speak around Milwaukee, WI and elsewhere in this region. Everyone that I speak to about F# "gets it". I have been having a lot of fun.
The good folks in the .NET Users Group in Rockford, IL (NETRUG; note that they are working on updating the web site; even though I'm not listed, I DID speak) were kind enough to invite me to speak at their March User's Group Meeting.
We had a fantastic meeting. The meeting took place on March 29th, 2006 and was located at a local business and we had the use of one of their conference rooms. Gerry and I arrived in Rockford, IL (from Milwaukee, WI) after an easy, 90 minute drive. About 10-12 people showed up. This post is a little late because I had written it and forgot to publish it (and a Rockford Users Group member emailed me to remind me; dude, where's our post?).
The part I like best about these meetings is hearing the issues of the local groups and how they manage those issues. In Appleton, WI, the toughest issue was trying to determine what topics to discuss in presentations in future meetings. Here the issue was organization and leadership. Leanne Fetter has done a great job getting this group together and they have a lot of great ideas. The group is working to solidify their leadership and roles so that the responsibilities are not placed on only one or two people. Many groups have these issues and it was great to hear open discussion in this group. Of course many other topics were discussed as well, but that the group was focused on leadership means that they are thinking about their durability and effectiveness as an organization.
After conversations on local group issues, I gave my F# presentation. Coming in to a new city, I usually don't know what to expect. The topic is not an easy topic, i.e. F# forces you to think in a number of different ways. I still find myself "context-switching" between C# and F# and "thinking in F#" only after a bit of effort. But the members of NETRUG picked up F# very quickly. As I walked through the presentation, there were a number of good questions and we covered a lot of depth. I try to engage each audience (in different cities) and hope that they respond. This audience responded. Given that the group size was 10-12, I could interact, on an almost individual basis, with each person. This provided for great tempo as well. This audience provided me with useful questions and commentary afterwards as well.
The Rockford .NET Users Group has solid membership and is growing. The group, like many others, is always looking for new members, speakers and leaders. If you are in the area, visit their site, attend the meetings or get involved.
I just arrived home from the FVNUG (Fox Valley .NET Users Group) meeting. I presented on F# (as usual). For a young group, i.e. this was only their second meeting, I thought they were well organized. I'm looking forward to visiting with them in the future, hopefully as a speaker, but definitely as an audience member. The meeting was more formal than those hosted by the WI .NET Users Group. One part that I really enjoyed was the "roundtable discussion". After I completed my presentation, I returned to my seat in the audience and the Chapter President, Chuck Goehler, opened the floor to questions about all things .NET. Any question was fair game and the idea was to get the group to talk about experiences in software development and in particular with applications in .NET. Because the group is new, a lot of topics were raised and those topics became future speaker topic items of interest.
I want to thank the group for their time. I also personally want to thank a few of the new officers of FVNUG:
- Chuck Goehler - President
- Christy Giblin - Director of Membership
- David Palfery - Director of Events
There were others to thank as well, but Chuck, Christy and David have started building a first-rate users group. If you are in the Fox Valley area, the group is looking for members and for leaders. I do know that they have a nine person board, for which only five positions have been filled. Visit FVNUG's web site if you are interested in either participating in these events, or are interested in becoming a board member. I can see this group growing quickly, so now is a good time to get in and make an impact.
Don't forget - Deeper in Dot Net is coming April 22, 2006. Space is limited, so register early . . .
Just a reminder that I'll be speaking at the the Fox Valley .NET Users Group tonight. I mentioned the details earlier here.
I'm leaving in an hour or so . . .
I'm speaking again on F#. On Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 at 6:00pm, I'll be giving my F# presentation to the Fox Valley .NET Users Group. Please note that the venue is Fox Valley Technical College Room F108. The Fox Valley .NET Users Group is a new organization. This is their second meeting and I'm really glad that they have invited me to give this presentation.
I first gave this presentation on Feb 21, 2006 to the WI .NET Users Group. I have since polished it up a bit, after feedback from a number of people.
If you are in the area, stop in for the presentation and the roundtable discussion that follows as well.
Don't forget - Deeper in Dot Net is coming April 22, 2006. Space is limited, so register early . . .
F# 1.1.10.2 was released by the F# Team at MSR. While there are a few minor changes in the language, the biggest change is the fsi - the F# interactive environment. It is now integrated into VS2005. While this integration may seem trivial, it represents a step forward for the F# environment and a move toward a competitive posture with other mathematics/scientific computing environments. The Visual F# Interactive session is global to the instance of VS2005, so interactivity with other F# code in the VS session is leveraged nicely.
One important note that is useful is this: the vfsi environment uses Alt-Enter and Alt-' (single quote) for evaluation of any selected text or a line. While this is useful within the VS2005 environment, make certain that if you are using this within a Virtual PC session, that you use the "left" side ALT key as the "right" side ALT key, when combined with the Enter key is the "toggle full screen mode" for VPC.
Get the download. Read more on Dr. Syme's post.
[Updated to add]
Please also note that the F# web site has now moved. The new location is http://research.microsoft.com/fsharp/fsharp.aspx.
I've completed my presentation for Wisconsin INETA on F#. I was able to leave the room with very few bumps and bruises. Seriously, what a great time it was. I haven't spoken in public in some time and I had a lot of fun. The crowd was fantastic and I'll say this: Everyone in the room "got" it. F# is a fun language and has a number of great uses. I touched on one very simple application using F#. Lists, Tuples, Type Inferencing, etc. were discussed.
You can find the presentation PowerPoint here. Please note that the code for this presentation will follow at a later date. The demonstration was to show "how" to construct a Sharpe Ratio and I hope have a post up a working example (that runs against publicly available data) in the near future. Given the time constraints (2 hours), it would be impossible to cover all of the material, so I wanted to make certain that people were left with a bit of understanding of both F# and Quantitative Finance (in a non quant-professional setting, i.e. for .NET developers).
More importantly, and don't tell anyone you saw these, but rumor has it that there are pictures of me in action here (with the first one here; as this stack will obviously have other eventual photos). Thanks Matt. Given The Liz's observations that I ought to "hit the gym more", I find no evidence of that in these photos. Ironic that in Matt's Flickr stack, I follow photos of "Tuscan-Style Garlic-Rosemary Roast Pork Loin".
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Contact me here with further questions.
I announced that I'm speaking at Wisconsin INETA for February earlier here. I personally invite everyone that visits this blog to attend.
My topic, as listed on the Wisconsin INETA site, will be An Introduction to F#. The official long title (after a revision or two) is F# - An Introduction Under an Application of Quantitative Finance. As this is my first speaking engagement in a few years, I'm really focused on delivering a clear and fun presentation (no duh?!?). the lower cased one mentioned that he'll keep me in my place if I get out of line with the math. I promise that of all of the slides, there is only one that has funky math symbology and there is a warning on the previous slide for those that don't want to blind.
I need to acknowledge two people for early reviews of and comments on my presentation. Dr. Don Syme, F# Team Lead and Language Designer/Architect, provided early feedback that was useful. Matt Terski also provided an early sanity check of the presentation. A big thank you to both of you. Any revisions since our discussions and errors that result are obviously my own.
If the above is not enough to get you out of the house in this cold Wisconsin winter, let me remind everyone that there will be free pizza and soda served and prizes (books, gift certificates, etc.), compliments of SysLogic, Inc., Apress and JJB Research. I personally thank Patty Pritchard Thompson of SysLogic and James Huddleston of Apress for their generosity.
While this is more of a personal note, it is nontheless important to me. I hope that when I look back at this post, I'll remember how I felt today.
I am fortunate to have a considerable number of friends and colleagues. This had better be a lot of fun . . .
With many things that require my attention, it is always nice to have friends like Marty, especially when I consider that he introduced me to F#. But now, he's provided information that will improve my February Wisconsin INETA presentation on F#. (warning, I didn't never not write those comments there). Gerry (fellow Wisconsin INETA presenter) concurs.
F# 1.1.7.0 (my coverage here) was released in early January with examples of F# and LINQ. Not more than 20 days later, F# 1.1.8.1 is now available. Out with the old and in with the new. And new it is. Dr. Don Syme, on an obviously busy schedule, has posted on his outstanding work on F# and LINQ.
This is Part I of a what appears will be a series of posts on topics in the LINQ initiative and the relative advantage that it provides in .NET and further, the advantages of the use of LINQ in F#.
Those of you that know me, know that I expend a great deal of energy to better my knowledge and understanding in many disciplines. Dr. Syme's comprehensive samples have provided another path of exploration and reduced my costs to learn. I urge you to do the same and take some time to learn from this work.
I'd also be curious to hear what DoubleI, .NET Monkey, The Beer Software Architect Application Services Manager (whose recent alpha release of Codus 1.3 is here; wtg Sean), THE Beer connoisseur (with that spiffy new blog location as moved from here) and others in the everyday professional practice of data manipulation at a high level of competence would think.
Wow, I have to admit that there is so much to learn on so many fronts. Sahil mentions the newest .NET technologies here and wonders both how much time is needed to work to learn these. The comments are useful as well (yeah, I'm in there in a few spots).
But I'm really getting jazzed on a few other works as well. I read Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog, and quite frankly, I have a difficult time keeping up with many of the works here. I have some depth in maths and logics, but there is a great deal of work by very bright people that is listed here.
Two posts, Haskell is not not ML and Haskell vs. Erlang, Reloaded, caught my attention.
Haskell is not not ML
I'm still not not done with this article. My first take-away from this is that there can be a "peaceful" co-existence with an eager language (ML) and a lazy language (Haskell) through an IL (hmmmmm). I really want to jump into a parenting analogy where one parent is strict and the other, not so strict, but, I'll refrain