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Inside Microsoft's New F# Language

Posted by michael on from the e-flat dept.

robyn217 writes "There's a new language being formed in the bowels of Microsoft. Recently I got word that the language F# (pronounced F Sharp) is nearing workable stages at Microsoft Research. So, I went in for a look-see. What I found was an interesting blend of imperative (Java, C#) and functional languages(it's ML-based, too!). It looks pretty enticing to me from a computer science perspective, but I'm not sure it would fly in the professional market. I can see the ease of development that a language loosely based on ML would bring, but I can't see coders switching over in droves since it's a tough learning curve." Our previous story on F#.

5 of 606 comments (clear)

  1. It's OCaml for the .NET CLR... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's OCaml for the .NET CLR. Not a new language. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  2. I like the idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    My first year CS classes were taught in ML. It's a very potent language. I especially liked the type inference system. What other languages do in templates comes naturally in ML. Our CS prof gave us an example of Quicksort in 3 lines of readable code. As an academic language ML has problems interfacing with real life systems. OcaML was a step in the right direction and MS is building F# on it. I'll certainly try this one.

  3. Haskell next? by axxackall · · Score: 5, Informative
    While I like ML (whole family) so much more than any imperative legacy (Java, C++, C, Perl), I see the main problem that any ML has with for modern RAD and with scripting is its static typing. And that's why I like (more than ML) Haskell - it's dynamically typed and thus it's much more appropriate both for operating scripting and for big app RAD.

    Until today, both ML and Haskell had a common problem: a lack of commercial and real world interest in it and therefore a lack of real-world libraries and supporting frameworks. But now things are going to be changed.

    First Ericson came with Erlang, an excelent essence of FP, LP, scripting and networking. Now M$ (I know - evil, but anyway) came with F# bringing OCaml to the real world saving from being forgotten somewhere in Inria.

    What next? I think that would be Haskell, the language even more suprior to ML, with already OOP, Parallel and Cuncurrent extensions. Also I like its Functional-Logical dialect - Curry. But who will bring it to the real world? IBM?

    --

    Less is more !
    1. Re:Haskell next? by KieranElby · · Score: 5, Informative

      I wouldn't bet against Microsoft bringing Haskell to the real world - their research department (which would put many universities to shame) has some top Haskell people, such as Simon Peyton Jones.
      There's some interesting papers by him over here.

    2. Re:Haskell next? by milesegan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Haskell is most certainly not dynamically typed. Like ML, it is a statically typed language with a compiler that does type inference at compile type. You don't usually have to manually declare types but you still have to get them right at compile time. There are some differences between ML's type system and Haskell's but they're basically the same animal.

      ML and Haskell differ mainly in that ML is an eager language, which evaluates all arguments to functions before evaluating the function. Haskell is a lazy language which delays evalution of function arguments until their values are needed.

      Erlang, on the other hand is dynamically typed.