Good point -- the GUI paradigm does seem to be increasingly popular these days.

It's been stated that the first release of F# will not have the designer tools C# and VB have. However, you can use the C# tool to generate the form, then "hook it up" with F#, or use F# behind the scenes.

I also think it's probably relatively easy to write up a XAML -> "typed class" converter, but haven't really looked into it.

-Michael

By on 5/30/2009 3:41 PM ()

See

[link:blogs.msdn.com]

which says the below; indeed a pattern we encourage is for apps that have both a significant GUI portion as well as a significant computation portion to be authored as mixed-language apps, with C# or VB for the GUI and F# for the guts. Visual Studio and the .Net platform make writing mixed-language apps incredibly easy and straightforward (indeed the F# VS integration itself is written partly in F#, partly in C#, and partly in VB).

Q. Will this release include designer tools?

o Our focus on delivering high-quality F# core tools is designed to augment Visual Studio’s amazing strengths as a presentation-rich object-oriented programming environment. As a result, we have made an explicit decision to leverage the strengths of C# and Visual Basic as presentational and designer-rich programming languages in this release. This means that F# users should use the Visual Studio designer tools to generate C# or Visual Basic code and incorporate those components into their F# applications. In Visual Studio 2010, we expect F# applications which include components built with designers (e.g. WinForms, ASP.NET, Silverlight and WPF applications with a designer front-end) will normally be authored as mixed language applications. We'll be providing templates that guide F# developers through this process.

By on 5/30/2009 3:41 PM ()

that means someone can not do the GUI easily with F# if he never learns C#.

that is obviously not good. therefore, F# should have its own GUI designer.

By on 5/30/2009 11:57 PM ()

Thanks Brian, and Michael. Very helpful posts on a major issue as F# goes mainstream.

I'm happy to keep C# in my repertoire, and have found it works well for the front end, as you describe.

>> indeed the F# VS integration itself is written partly in F#, partly in C#, and partly in VB

VB? Am I missing out on anything important by being incapable with VB? Does it have any advantages that make it worthwhile investing some learning time?

By on 5/30/2009 7:01 PM ()

VB? Am I missing out on anything important by being incapable with VB? Does it have any advantages that make it worthwhile investing some learning time?

Can't find the blog entry right now, but as I recall the reason some parts of F# integration are written in VB is because that entire portion of Visual Studio integration for all other languages is written in VB. Using this language makes it easier for the group responsible for that code to maintain it going forward.

By on 5/31/2009 7:26 AM ()

[Can't find the blog entry right now, but as I recall the reason some parts of F# integration are written in VB is because that entire portion of Visual Studio integration for all other languages is written in VB.  Using this language makes it easier for the group responsible for that code to maintain it going forward.

No blog entry (that I know of), Luke Hoban explained this in his Lang.NET presentation.I guess some niceties in VB are support for dynamic, and the XML lINQ syntax (from what I've seen - I find that VB is much too close to C# to actually invest time in it).

By on 6/1/2009 12:40 AM ()

@jhugard: Thanks - that makes sense. It also re-inforces the other posts in this thread - that we should get used to mixed language projects, for either technical or commercial reasons.

By on 5/31/2009 2:58 PM ()
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