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An Interview With F# Creator Don Syme

Posted by kdawson on from the same-as-g-flat-if-you're-tempered dept.

OCatenac passes along an interview with Don Syme, chief designer of F#, which is Microsoft Research's offering for functional programming on the .Net platform. Like Scala, which we discussed last fall, F# aims at being an optimal blend of functional and object-oriented languages. "[Q] What is the best program you've seen written in F#? [A] I've mentioned the samples from F# for Scientists, which are very compelling... For commercial impact then the uses of F# in the finance industry have been very convincing, but probably nothing beats the uses of F# to implement statistical machine learning algorithms as part of the Bing advertisement delivery machinery. ... We've recently really focused on ensuring that programming in F# is simple and intuitive. For example, I greatly enjoyed working with a high-school student who learned F#. After a few days she was accurately modifying a solar system simulator, despite the fact she'd never programmed before. You really learn a lot by watching a student at that stage."

11 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. There going to run out of musical notes soon... by Wingman+5 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will D flat be the same language as c#?

    1. Re:There going to run out of musical notes soon... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      In music theory, F# is as far as you can get from C.

  2. F is for Fun? by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, when everything works out. Something tells me F will mean something completely different when youre getting compiler errors or crashes.

    1. Re:F is for Fun? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You're saying they'll leave the 'N' out of 'Functional'?

      dom

    2. Re:F is for Fun? by Dirtside · · Score: 4, Funny

      F# is an abbreviation -- the language's full name is F#$@!

      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
  3. Syntax parser. by Ranzear · · Score: 2, Funny

    If someone makes a debugger or syntax checker for it, will it be called 'F#CK'?

    --
    Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
    1. Re:Syntax parser. by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, it's called Visual Studio, actually.

      Hmmm.....

  4. Re:Checkbox marketing by mangu · · Score: 2, Funny

    What more evidence does one need that .Net is crap?

    Anecdotes aren't evidence, but their weight increases with decreasing distance. If your anecdote were about camel traders in some Central Asia mountains I would never give it a second thought.

    Computer programming, OTOH, is closer to home, it's not just *one* bad program in C# that crashes, it's everyone who works with computers that has come across one badly written .NET system after another.

    There must be something wrong about the whole .NET architecture, maybe it's not the system itself, maybe it's because it attracts too many people who do not have what it takes to become a great programmer, but the proportion of .NET systems that are buggy seems to be much greater than in other platforms.

  5. Re:.NET Framework by daveime · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope chapter 1 contains directives on when and when not to use fixed width fonts.

  6. Time to change by thetsguy · · Score: 3, Funny

    WTF#

  7. Re:Functional languages and recursion by ascari · · Score: 2, Funny

    Why are most programmers uncomfortable with it?

    Possible because:
    n1=1
    n2=2
    n3=6
    n4=24
    n5= "Segmentation fault. Core dump"

    What can be done to break this cycle?

    Try this:
    #define "Segmentation fault. Core dump" 120