X# Functional Programming from Microsoft?

TheSync writes "SearchWebServices.Com has an article claiming that Microsoft is working on a functional language named 'X#'. The language is supposed to be data-oriented and LISP-like, but set up to handle XML."

Comments

Humorists!

[avalys]

"Microsoft is working on a functional language...".

Heh...funny. We're finally getting some humor around here.

Is .NET .DEAD yet?

[MacAndrew]

I've been waiting for the .ANNOUNCEMENT, but .MAYBE I'm .HOPING for too .MUCH.

You know.. in music..

[MarvinMouse]

Being sharp isn't a good thing... It's actually common for singers who don't know how to sing to sing sharp... Yet, Microsoft likes C#, and X# (X isn't even a note this time.) I am excited though. I am waiting for someone to tune Microsoft a bit and perhaps release b-flat, or perhaps D##.

Sometimes being sharp is useful (in the right key), but if you already know the key is C, C# is not a good note to hit.

Re:You know.. in music..

[Alethes]

but if you already know the key is C, C# is not a good note to hit.

Tell that to any of the jazz guys that like the sound of a flat-9. :)

Yeah, offtopic. Who cares?

Why Not XSLT?

[marvinx]

Isn't XSLT a functional language? It's a wonderfully helpful tool when working with XML. How would another language (X#?) help the situation?

I'd love to see more XSLT systems be built. XSLT becomes powerful when everything is XML, and everything can be obtained via HTTP. This is why Web Services (SOAP/etc) won't take off the way the web has. You can't address the object in a Web Service, you can only address its proxy. Not to mention that all of those objects have some odd proprietary interface to them, instead of the ubiquitous GET/PUT/DELETE of HTTP.

Wow, I really went off topic.

To sum up: Use XSLT!

Re:Why Not XSLT?

[__past__]

XSLT may be turing complete, but at a general-purpose programming language, it sucks. Even for complex XML transformations, it gets messy. Would you like to write

<call-template name="split-string">
<with-param name="string" select="$s">
<with-param name="delimiter" select=" "/>
</call-template>

instead of

split_string($s, " ")

every time? That all input has to be well-formed XML doesn't help either. XSLT is useful, but for a limited domain.

Wrong

[sporty]

"You can't just import an XML file and magically have it available to your program. You have to first put it through some sort of transformation, which requires work that is unnatural or unwieldy." -- Sean McGrath

yes you can

Just a proprietary xquery?

[etedronai]

I am highly skeptical of things like this because it seems to just be microsoft attempting to control an xml based data language as a reaction to a similar open language, xquery, being developed by the w3c.

Re:I see the plan. . .

[Ouroboro]

1. Expand .NET framework to cater to the 50 or so programmers out there who like both M$ and functional programming.
2. ???????
3. PROFIT!

You want to know the funny thing... I interviewed at MS (Yes I know I'm a whore). I didn't get the job. I think the primary reason was that durring the whole interview I was bagging on CS curriculums that made use of functional programming languages. It just so happens that at least two of the interviewers were big fans of functional programming. One of them had even studied under one of the people who was responsible for big chunks of the Scheme language specification. I guess there are two take aways from this. One, know more about the backgrounds of those who interview you. Two, don't underestimate the number of programmers who like both ms and functional programming. I manage to find two of them in the same room.

Re:What good are functional languages?

[hey!]

I dunno. Depends on what you mean by "real development". The main limiting factor seems to be the number of people who know Lisp well. If I had to hire a team to do a project in Lisp, I'd probably have to train them all. However, I used to know many very, very smart people who designed complex real world systems in Lisp. They just tended to work in a rather rarified stratosphere of problem domains: not your payroll and website kind of stuff, but horrible, complex and intractable problems.

Lisp is a great hackers language, because it seems like you can code as a way of thinking about a problem, an approach that is usually disasterous. Perhaps the awful syntax makes a necessity of the virtue of abstraction. I'd guess that in part this is because programs are data , rather than organizing things around compilation units, which leads to a differnt kind of rhythm to programming.

I wonder whether anybody has used extreme programming with Lisp; it seems like the lisp tendency to build small compact bits of code would be a natural fit.

Re:Can we just put and end to this already m$

[JohnFluxx]

They had to do it. .NET was NOT designed for functional languages. They tried to add on supported with something called idx

However when they came to try to port something like haskal over to it, they found it just wouldn't fit(See page 18) so they had to make do with a sort of bridge instead.

So what I think they've done is taken a functional language, taken out the features that don't fit well with .net (untyped terms?) and called it a "feature" :)

I'm way out of my depth on this though - hopefully by providing links someone cleverer than me will correct me.

good rhetoric but low on fact

[DrSkwid]

The next thing you know they are going to be taking something like unix and adding a letter to it and calling it the greatest thing sence sliced bread

August 1980: Microsoft announces XENIX OS, a portable operating system for various 16-bit microprocessors. XENIX is an interactive, multi-user, multi-tasking system. It will be able to run all of Microsoft's existing system software, and also be compatible with the programs written for UNIX OS.

[Xenix was actually an OEM version of Unix licensed by ATT]

August 1984: Microsoft announces that it will use XENIX and MS-DOS for its new personal computer, the IBM PC AT. The new PC sets the standards in multi-user systems. Both of its operating systems support the Intel APX-286 microprocessor.

see here and here

As for Linux :
July 1991
> Message-ID:
> Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT
>
> Hello netlanders,
>
> Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix
> standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably)
> machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be
> nice.