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An Interview With F# Creator Don Syme
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."
Will D flat be the same language as c#?
Sure, when everything works out. Something tells me F will mean something completely different when youre getting compiler errors or crashes.
and the emotive language and buzzwords
*yawn* unconvinced.
Last year I wanted to know what all the hoopla was about functional programming. I checked out Haskell, Scala, OCaML and F#. Coming from a Java/Delphi/C# background myself I had to go through it a couple of times before I "got" it. I'm glad I did because I banged out my first production IronPython lambda function on last Friday (yay!).
I know that MS bashing is popular here on Slashdot, but I really want to take a moment to say that the .NET Framework really is excellent. The ability to mix and match different paradigms and languages in a clean an concise manner which is a joy to program in.
Yeah I know patents bla bla mono bla bla Novell bla bla Miguel bla bla.
Functional-based programming languages are syntactically inferior to OO ones
Most likely just the ones that you've seen, and for the tasks you've thrown at them. I wouldn't write a line-of-business application in F#, sure, but I wouldn't write a parser in C# either.
While we're at syntax - I've yet to see any non-hybrid OO language which has anything matching the power and beauty of classic FP pattern-patching. For any sort of tree processing especially, it's a god send - whereas in OO you have to deal with ugly visitor pattern hack.
Then also, FP doesn't have to mean "alien syntax", either. Have you seen Scala? It has everything any self-respecting FP language needs to have, yet it's still very much OO-centric, and the syntax is broadly Javaesque.
To conclude... one of the first two OO languages, and the one to which pretty much all OO languages today owe at least half of their design, is Smalltalk. Coincidentally, it's also a very potent FP language - blocks are nothing but first-class functions, and they were used so pervasively in the language and the standard library that even the most basic conditional statement was actually a method call with two blocks...
And yet, Smalltalk is considered as one of the most pure OO languages ever.
Which is to say that OO and FP is really orthogonal, and not at all contradictive. You can have both, and either one is good for something different - so there's no reason not to have both, and get the best of both worlds.
To say a language is "functional" does not mean the same thing as the common usage of the word, which is to say "useful" or "utilitarian", though in my experience with Ocaml, Haskell, and Erlang, they are that as well if you take the time to learn to use them well. Fortran and F# have just about nothing in common.
The name "functional" is a little confusing, since imperative languages are heavily based on functions as well, though they are not typically used in the same way. For instance, in a functional language it is usually much easier to write functions that compute useful things without causing side effects, such as modification of shared state. They also usually support such features as tail call optimization (which causes certain forms of recursion to require constant rather than linear stack space), closures, the ability to declare functions within other functions, and the ability to call a function with less than its expected number of arguments, yielding a function of the remaining arguments.
Another common trait of functional languages is the absence of looping constructs, in favor of recursion and library functions like map and fold.
There's one particular reason to look at F#, and that's FParsec. Parser combinators are just awesome, and don't get me wrong - I like the original Parsec, and Haskell in general! - but its IDE support is minimal, and debugging it is a pain.
With F#, you get the same awesome tool, but in an environment where you can actually use it for day-to-day jobs - write any parsing code as an F# library using FParsec, and call it from the main body of C#/VB/IronPython code.
Being an old fuddy-duddy, my first thought that Microsoft was doing a dot NET version of Fortran, but...
Obvious retort is why?
I've no idea why you'd want one, but it exists, nonetheless - made by Fujitsu of all things.
Oh, by the way, Fujitsu must really be into BDSM or something - they also offer COBOL for .NET.
Totally marketing garbage. Man is probably a great guy, with a lousy job. But F#, really? even .NET is ripping off Java.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that F# is somehow "ripping off" Java? If you mean it's a "rip off" something else, then, well, it's clearly designated as an OCaml derivative, it's not exactly news... but we wouldn't get far if people wouldn't "rip off" the work of others, and build on that. You know, just like Java ripped off C++ and Smalltalk, and JavaScript ripped off Self, and Smalltalk ripped off Lisp, etc...
If you mean .NET as a whole being a rip-off of Java, then you're late by like 6 years or so - C# 1.0 was for the most part "a better Java" (note the "better" part, however), but since then it has evolved much faster, and Java is struggling to keep pace, "ripping off" C# as it goes. To give a specific example: C# had first-class functions (called anonymous delegates in the language) in version 2.0, released in 2005. Java still doesn't have them, and they will only likely come in Java 7, to be released by the end of this year. To give another example, C# 2.0 and above has generics that Java language designers would call "reified". Java doesn't, and there's no telling when, or even if, it will.
Microsoft talks about building "ecosystems" but the way they do it, everything in the ecosystem has to have a M$ logo on it. Why can't they just inter-operate and integrate with outside software?
Uhh, I don't even know where to begin here.
Here is the C# language specification, if you ever want to write your own C#compiler. Here is the CLI spec - this covers VM semantics, all involved file formats, and the fundamental class library - this is useful for a .NET compiler for any language.
And third-party languages for .NET do exist in large quantities. One good example is Delphi Prism, which provides full Visual Studio experience, not any worse than what is there for C# out of the box. Then there's Eiffel, Smalltalk, Perl, Fortran, COBOL... IronPython and IronRuby were also outside projects, by the way - their authors got hired by MS along the way because the company was interested in developing dynamic languages on the platform, and, naturally, picked the two most popular ones.
Libraries are also part of the "ecosystem", by definition and there are tons of third-party ones. I won't even bother giving links as there are too many - google it if you want.
So, can you explain what you mean by "inter-operate and integrate with outside software" with respect to .NET, if the above is not good enough?
He was probably modded as troll because, while he may be entirely correct about "marketing droids", the conclusion that "F# stinks" doesn't exactly follow from that - unless he has some specific horror stories to share. Or at least saw the language, and is qualified to judge on its merits (i.e. familiar with similar existing languages).
Looking at the wikipedia articles, I tend to think he has a point. Look at the F# version of the famous factorial program and compare to the Haskell version(s). I think anyone would be hard-pressed to prefer the F# version, but who knows?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
F# version is essentially the same as OCaml version. In practice, you will notice that there are a lot of people who prefer OCaml to Haskell even today, and that has to do with quality of implementation. Haskell is a nice language on the paper, but its laziness makes it both hard to implement fast, and insanely hard to debug.
With F#, you get language on par with OCaml (so less high-level and expressive than Haskell). But you also get the ability to directly call any existing .NET library - no wrappers or FFI declarations needed. Furthermore, you get an IDE with syntax highlighting, code completion, error checking as you type, and debugging.
Also, keep in mind that most people who get acquainted with F# today aren't familiar with Haskell. In fact, most of them don't even know it exists. They are C++, C# and VB users, who suddenly discover a new project type in VS2010, and are curious as to what this is all about. For them, the basis of comparison will be a typical imperative OO language, not Haskell - and most marketing materials are written with that in mind. It is generally assumed that people who know Haskell can judge these kind of things on their own :)
I understand that it is popular to bash anything that burst forth from the loins of Microsoft, but c'mon! This is Don, The Don, this is one hard-core damned brilliant programming dude (for want of a better term). He was single handedly responsible for generics in c# (something I am greatly thankful for in my day to day work) F# is his baby; the guy is passionate about the idea of a real world practical functional language. Sometimes people use emotive language when they are talking about things that they have devoted themselves to for years. Especially when they believe that it could bring functional programming into the mainstream. I have used F#, and personally really enjoy coding with it (and especially the different way in which solving problems in this manner makes you think). Might be a long time before it is excepted into production code though...
F# version is essentially the same as OCaml version.
I don't know OCaml (I have a cursory knowledge of Haskell, which is why I picked that for comparison), but I could read the OCaml version no problem. The Scala version was difficult, but after staring at it for a bit I understands what it's getting at (especially the _ syntax is unnecessary obtuse). I still think F# is the worst of the lot. Big disclaimer: I have only looked at the factorial example. So this is sort of criticism based on "Hello World" snippets. I'm just saying that the poster far above might actually know what he is talking about,.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I agree that Python has some strange things about it, but look at some sample f# syntax from Wikipedia:
let rec factorial n =
match n with
| 0I -> 1I
| _ -> n * factorial (n - 1I)
What do those funny characters mean? What's the I after the numbers? Compare to the python one liner:
def factorial(n): return 1 if n == 0 else n * factorial (n-1)
That makes sense even to someone with absolutely zero experience in the language.
WTF#
Advanced??? Changed maybe. 30 years ago I taught myself BASIC from reference manuals in a few hours, enough to write a quadratic equation graphing program for my calculus class for extra credit. My second program was a password cracker so I could get higher priority on the university computer. I've modified code in languages that I had no experience in without any manual just by looking at syntax. So someone taking a few days to learn a programming language and modifying a planet simulator isn't all that impressive for a language ... they just found someone that learns quickly. I'm impressed in the person that picked it up, not the language. It mostly comes down to understanding if/then/else logic, loop constructs, and how to call methods after you learn syntax. Learning these constructs isn't too difficult, applying them takes a little more.
.. instead of spending a few days learning syntax, and a few months mastering a language, we now take a few days to learn syntax, and YEARS to learn all the calls and libraries that go along with it. My first attempt at C++ resulted in my giving up, not because I didn't understand the language but because I was trying to write GUI programs and didn't have the right book to explain which libraries to use and why.
So now
Programming tools have definitely advanced. The days of punched cards and line editors like EDLIN are far gone for most programming needs. It's nice that modern languages don't let you overflow arrays anymore or have to deal with pointers.
The biggest advances in programming??? Compilers, recursion, and object oriented syntax. I've seen far too many 'the next big thing' to get excited over something like this. Remember when C# was supposed to be the next big thing???
But I'm still using the same if/then/else and loop logic that I did 30 years ago. No matter how much things change, they still stay the same....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.