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Future of F#?
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Just an idea, what would be the future of F# now? It's been released in VS 2010 as stable language/platform, but are there any plans for further development? For example usage of F# in MS Office suite instead of Visual Basic? :)

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Is there any web site we can put our suggestions on F# to and vote for them?
Should we use Microsoft Connect?

By on 7/18/2010 9:58 PM ()

I would like to second LOST's thoughts. It would be nice to see what are the future plans for F#, perhaps not only as a language but what features are planned and so on.

The F# team has been very involved with the community which is awesome, but it's been a bit quiet since the 2.0 release. Perhaps the F# team took a well deserved vacation?

By on 7/19/2010 7:00 AM ()

"Instead of Visual Basic"; please don't laugh; seriously this is a big pragmatic starting. F# is one of those really rare programming languages that has both strong internals and friendly externals. F# really cab be use instead of something like VB.NET; it has a clear pythonic sytax, a csharpic semantics and a module system like that of VB. This does not mean that one should not appreciate things like quotation and an exceptional power to implement monads 'seamlessly' on .NET. But those "features" should not be promoted as "features" to ordinary developers (like myself). F# should be promoted for type inference and an exceptional option to reduce development time. One can ask then why those features exists? I ask how many of us (assume we are C# or VB developers) ever needed to implement a LINQ provider (and parsing those expression trees)? Yet LINQ to SQL is far more than just fun to work with. F# should be presented as a new VB. Don't laugh! (Well; if you insist...:) )

By on 7/15/2010 9:42 AM ()

F# should be presented as a new VB.

Seems a bit odd. VB, like PHP, has it's roots as the easy entry level, quick start language for people who are not programmers, i.e. hobbyists and the like. I'm told that professionals use it these days too, but "a new VB" still sounds like something for non programmers to me. I could already imagine horrid PHPesque solutions we'd see in F# if it where associated with the B**ic word...

By on 7/17/2010 3:33 AM ()

(Sorry! I did not got a notification for you reply!)
BTW this blog entry is about Scala: Scala is for VB programmers. It is about how language facilities can be organized into different layers. In that sense F# can seem as a not so big language.

By on 12/10/2010 11:10 AM ()

Hm, since this thread seems to have been resurrected, I should point out Don's "Future of F#" talk:

[link:player.microsoftpdc.com]

as well as mention the open-source drop and stuff like this

[link:tirania.org]

for any folks who have been hiding under a rock the past six weeks. :)

By on 12/10/2010 12:39 PM ()

Something similar may happen in business. F# stands a pretty fair chance at becoming a lingua franca for the financial and world, and F# and Linq for the business world.

In other words: a common business oriented language that (unlike earlier attempts) is efficient, flexible and spans both high and low level programming.

But who dares to mention the C*B*L word, lol?

-Neil

By on 7/17/2010 9:05 AM ()

It's been released in VS 2010 as stable language/platform, but are there any plans for further development?

That's a rather odd question at this stage of F#'s history. MS ships a brand new commercial language product. Your 1st question seems to be whether they're abandoning it. Why would they? They just went through all this trouble to ship it, and it's very early days for the product. What are you expecting, instant everything? It takes time for people to actually care about a new language, and for software to be written.

By on 7/14/2010 1:48 PM ()

I would hope that they provide strong support in the niche areas where F# is supposed to be strong.

They always say that F# is strong in areas that are compute intensive etc. So I hope that the Math library will be extended.

In the end, they should really aim at providing a replacement to Matlab and similar software. For starters, I want an easy way to produce 2 and 3 dimensional graphs. Really, I want to be able to make a call to plot, like I would do in matlab, and everything would just work.

F# was supposed to be the first really successfull functional language partly because it would have a huge library and offer developers tooling support (e.g. Visual Studio) that other functional languages simply hadn't done before.

Well, now it's time to step up to the plate. Let me plot my values!

By on 7/13/2010 1:05 PM ()

Let me plot my values!

Would you happen to mean something like this? (using built-in .NET 4.0 controls)

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#r "System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization"

open System
open System.Windows.Forms
open System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting
open System.Data

type LineChartForm( title, xs : float seq ) =
    inherit Form( Text=title )

    let chart = new Chart(Dock=DockStyle.Fill)
    let area = new ChartArea(Name="Area1")
    let series = new Series()
    do series.ChartType <- SeriesChartType.Line
    do xs |> Seq.iter (series.Points.Add >> ignore)
    do series.ChartArea <- "Area1"
    do chart.Series.Add( series )
    do chart.ChartAreas.Add(area)
    do base.Controls.Add( chart )

let main() =
    let f = new LineChartForm( "Sine", seq { for i in 1..1000 do yield sin(float i / 100.0) } )
    f.Show()

main()
By on 7/18/2010 9:29 AM ()

In the end, they should really aim at providing a replacement to Matlab and similar software. For starters, I want an easy way to produce 2 and 3 dimensional graphs. Really, I want to be able to make a call to plot, like I would do in matlab, and everything would just work. F# was supposed to be the first really successfull functional language partly because it would have a huge library and offer developers tooling support (e.g. Visual Studio) that other functional languages simply hadn't done before. Well, now it's time to step up to the plate. Let me plot my values!

This is exactly what our F# for Visualization product already provides.

By on 7/16/2010 2:43 PM ()

Let me plot my values!

+1

By on 7/15/2010 2:26 AM ()

I think F# would be an awesome language for general application scripting.

I'm not privy to Microsoft's plans, but as far as I'm concerned, the more F#, the better. I think the key is for the programmer base to continue promoting F#, to continue using F# in applications, and to continue demanding more F# tools.

-Neil

By on 7/12/2010 10:09 AM ()

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