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Microsoft Open Sources F#
aabelro writes "Don Syme has announced the release of the F# compiler source code as a code drop under Apache 2.0. He wrote, 'The F# PowerPack now includes libraries, tools and the compiler/library source code drops. I'd like to take a moment to explain the F# team's approach to this. Firstly, the source for the F# compiler in our MSI/CTP releases has been available for some time, in the releases themselves, so in that sense there's not much new in this release. Secondly, we've always made sure we have a free download binary release of F# available, and will continue to do that, and that should still be the main way you "get" a release of F#. However, we've long discussed making compiler+library source available in a different way. After some discussion, we've decided to do this via a "code drop" model, where we make available versions of the compiler+library code logically matching each release of the F# language itself.'"
Where's the catch? What will you inadvertently start using that will later need licensing?
F### that Microsoft S###.
Never-mind...rhetorical question...
It's really nice they did this, and the license they chose (Apache 2.0) is very free/libre.
But honestly... is there going to be a big community around this? I don't think so. You can say a lot about the Windows ecosystem, but "lively open source developer community" isn't one of them. So the source code is probably going to be of use for debugging purposes, or research purposes, but other than that, I can't see lots of people chipping in on the F# libs or something like that.
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It Microsoft's implementation of objective Caml.
Unbelievable! They start moving in a direction that they've been criticized for NOT moving in/adopting and what's the response from the /. snots? I guess it takes some honor/courage/maturity to give credit when it's due.
Proverbs 21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.
For starters, it's five semitones higher!
There's always a catch, in this case you'll stop using other development platforms and produce apps that will only run on dotNET ..
Because many of us - like it or not - develop on Windows platforms. F# works better with .NET than Ocaml does.
I've never used it personally, but IIRC from my functional programming unit at University, F# is MS's language for the functional programming paradigm. Similar to Haskell (which is what we did study). I *think* it also has elements of other programming paradigms too, but don't quote me on that (:
Very few .NET languages have strong advantages over the others aside from programmer preference. It's more about which one you like coding in, as all of them have pretty much the same capabilities.
With that said, it appears that F# is essentially a tweaked OCaml syntax, whereas C# is a tweaked C++ syntax. It's really more about what you prefer coding in.
I must say though, despite loving my Linux desktop at home, I work in C# a great deal at work, and I love it. I know there's a lot of MS hate on Slashdot, but their development tools are amazing. I'd do a lot more coding in Linux if I had something that was similar to (and of the same quality, which throws out things like Monodevelop) Visual Studio.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
so they released the F# Compiler Kit?
Until Microsoft permanently ceases asserting software patent rights, sharing their source code is of very limited value.
And therefore, it's interesting that the chose to use a license that explicitly offers a Grant of Patent License.
--- I'd do a lot more coding in Linux if I had something that was similar to (and of the same quality, which throws out things like Monodevelop) Visual Studio. Vim ;)
Boredom is bliss.
I do. F# has a good size of developers using it.
F-sharp (pseudo musical notation)
Where's the catch? What will you inadvertently start using that will later need licensing?
There is no catch. Microsoft is doing this because F# has no commercial value. Who uses F#? A couple of math/CS geeks?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Because you can do the bits that functional languages are good at in F#, and the bits traditional languages are good at in C#, and call one from the other without having to resort to the traditional inter-language calling methods like COM et al (not sure if I have the right example there, I never did modern application development before C#).
.Net.
Literally, with C# and F# you can just define classes in either and call them in the other language directly.
Thats what sets this apart from Ocaml, and thats why people use it over Ocaml on
Because next to F#, Ocaml frankly said sucks. And I don't mean to be a troll. Almost anything you look at in Ocaml, F# has it better. Libraries, performance, interoperability, ...
All of the facilities of CLR are available from F# -- that includes vast core .NET libraries, all of 3rd party .NET libraries, interoperability with all of the code that runs on CLR,... To give a transportation analogy: the libraries available in Ocaml are to libraries available in F# like a car's driver is to a seagoing ferry.
Ocaml was developed by INRIA to support their own R&D program, pretty much. There is, understandably, little incentive for them to have Ocaml do much more besides what they themselves need. It's OK, really, there's only so much you can do with limited funds and the day only being 24h long.
Never mind that there are serious technical issues with the virtual machine that runs Ocaml bytecode, and with the runtime library that supports native-compiled Ocaml. Those issues are benign enough to allow Ocaml to be deployed in certain scenarios, but for a language platform to be widely used they are pretty much non-starters. F# runs on CLR, a platform that gets as much or more development resources allotted to it yearly than Ocaml saw through the whole of its long existence, including that of Caml-lite.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Does this mean that we can use the source code to port F# to other platform such as GCC and LLVM?
Forgive my lack of knowledge as Delphi developer, but what is F# and does it have any advantages over, say, C#?
Well really the power of F# comes from the functional programming style. So there are much easier, cleaner ways to do some things in F# than C#. They both have the same capabilities, the way you implement and code them is just different. Also, with the ability to have F# and C# code call each other makes it so you can have the benefits of object oriented (C#) along with the benefits of functional (F#) while having clean code in both.
I agree that this is a really nice from Microsoft, but why not go for the "original", i.e. Ocaml?
I was intrigued with Sun's Fortress, but this has gone nowhere, and it is fundamentally flawed from the start in that it is tied to the JVM, which is no-no when it comes to high performance computing.
How's that again? I haven't seen any indication that CLR is better suited for HPC than the JVM. Not that I've looked extensively, mind you, but it seems like the two runtimes are not that far apart.
You might want to look into Qt-Creator for your cross-platform C++ development. It just so happens that it is integrated with the Qt libraries and tools quite seamlessly and makes developing applications for linux and windows at the same time a snap.
Qt Creator