At this Saturday’s Code Camp I’ll be giving a brand new presentation on using F#.  The goal of this presentation is to have those attending leave with an idea of what F# can help them achieve today as well as instill a desire to know more.  This post contains my presentation materials as well as links to additional information on the topics covered.

(Slide and code links will be updated soon.)

 

Presentation Details

F# for Testing and Analytics will be held in the TBC (Technical Briefing Center) at 10:30am.

New England Code Camp 11 Information
Download Presentation Slides
Download Real World Example Code Sample

I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately on the best way to get developers excited about F#.  By focusing less on the language’s details and more on what the language can help achieve I hope to impress upon those attending why F# is worth the effort.  The preliminary structure of the talk is as follows::

• Introduction
  • Announcing the New England F# User Group 
• Why F#?
  • Time Savings
  • Readability
  • Code Exploration
  • Robust Software
  • Visual Analytics
• F# Testing Toolbox
  • xUnit.NET
  • TestDriven.NET and NCover
  • NaturalSpec
  • FsCheck
  • FsStory
• A Real World Example
  • Exploring the Problem Space
  • Collect, Analyze, Report
  • Visualizing Data

Presentation Influences
John Hughes’s Paper: Why Functional Programming Matters
John Hughes’s Talk: FP – A Secret Weapon for Software Testing
Matthew Podwysocki’s 7 Part Series: Functional Programming Unit Testing

 

Announcing the New England F# User Group 

I’m proud to announce that we will be holding our first New England F# User Group meeting on Monday April 6th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.  It will be held at the aptly named Microsoft NERD center.  I hope to see you there.

Visit the F# User Group Homepage for more information.

 

xUnit.NET

“About a year ago it became clear to myself and Brad Wilson that there were some very clear patterns of success (and failure) with the tools we were using for writing tests. Rather than repeating guidance about "do X" or "don't do Y", it seemed like it was the right time to reconsider the framework itself and see if we could codify some of those rules.”

xUnit.NET Homepage

Learn More about xUnit.NET
Matthew Podwysocki’s The Unit Testing Story in F# Revisited
Jim Burger’s Unit testing in F# with xUnit.NET
Harry Pierson’s Practical F# Parsing: Unit Testing

 

TestDriven.NET and NCover

“TestDriven.NET is a zero friction unit testing add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The current release of TestDriven.NET supports multiple unit testing frameworks including NUnit, MbUnit and MS Team System and is fully compatible with all versions of the .NET Framework.”

TestDriven.NET Homepage (Includes a free version of NCover)
NCover Homepage

Learn More about TestDriven.NET and NCover
Matthew Podwysocki’s F# + TestDriven.NET + xUnit = Win 
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 4 – Code Coverage

 

NaturalSpec

“The idea of NaturalSpec is to give domain experts the possibility to express their scenarios directly in compilable Unit Test scenarios by using a Domain-specific language (DSL) for Unit Tests. NaturalSpec is completely written in F# – but you don’t have to learn F# to use it. You don’t even have to learn programming at all.”

NaturalSpec Homepage

Learn More about NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s “Getting Started” with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Testing QuickSort with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Using NaturalSpec to create a spec for C# projects

 

FsCheck

“FsCheck is a tool for testing .NET programs automatically. The programmer provides a specification of the program, in the form of properties which functions, methods or objects should satisfy, and FsCheck then tests that the properties hold in a large number of randomly generated cases.”

FsCheck Homepage

Learn More about FsCheck
Claudio Cherubino’s Random testing in F# with FsCheck
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 2 – QuickCheck and FsCheck
Kurt Schelfthout’s FsChecking dnAnalytics Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

 

FsStory

“FsStory is a library for writing executable user stories in F#. FsStory enables the developer to write user story scenarios (in Given/When/Then form) in F# code.”

FsStory Homepage

Learn More about FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s Fluent language in FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s FsStory, executable stories in F#

At this Saturday’s Code Camp I’ll be giving a brand new presentation on using F#.  The goal of this presentation is to have those attending leave with an idea of what F# can help them achieve today as well as instill a desire to know more.  This post contains my presentation materials as well as links to additional information on the topics covered.

 

Presentation Details

F# for Testing and Analytics will be held in the TBC (Technical Briefing Center) at 10:30am.

New England Code Camp 11 Information

I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately on the best way to get developers excited about F#.  By focusing less on the language’s details and more on what the language can help achieve I hope to impress upon those attending why F# is worth the effort.  The preliminary structure of the talk is as follows::

• Introduction
  • Announcing the New England F# User Group 
• Why F#?
  • Time Savings
  • Readability
  • Code Exploration
  • Robust Software
  • Power
• F# Testing Toolbox
  • xUnit.NET
  • TestDriven.NET and NCover
  • NaturalSpec
  • FsCheck
• A Real World Example
  • Exploring the Problem Space
  • Collect, Analyze, Report
  • Visualizing Data

Presentation Influences
John Hughes’s Paper: Why Functional Programming Matters
John Hughes’s Talk: FP – A Secret Weapon for Software Testing
Matthew Podwysocki’s 7 Part Series: Functional Programming Unit Testing

 

Announcing the New England F# User Group 

I’m proud to announce that we will be holding our first New England F# User Group meeting on Monday April 6th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.  It will be held at the aptly named Microsoft NERD center.  I hope to see you there.

Visit the F# User Group Homepage for more information.

 

xUnit.NET

“About a year ago it became clear to myself and Brad Wilson that there were some very clear patterns of success (and failure) with the tools we were using for writing tests. Rather than repeating guidance about "do X" or "don't do Y", it seemed like it was the right time to reconsider the framework itself and see if we could codify some of those rules.”

xUnit.NET Homepage

Learn More about xUnit.NET
Matthew Podwysocki’s The Unit Testing Story in F# Revisited
Jim Burger’s Unit testing in F# with xUnit.NET
Harry Pierson’s Practical F# Parsing: Unit Testing

 

TestDriven.NET and NCover

“TestDriven.NET is a zero friction unit testing add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The current release of TestDriven.NET supports multiple unit testing frameworks including NUnit, MbUnit and MS Team System and is fully compatible with all versions of the .NET Framework.”

TestDriven.NET Homepage (Includes a free version of NCover)
NCover Homepage

Learn More about TestDriven.NET and NCover
Matthew Podwysocki’s F# + TestDriven.NET + xUnit = Win 
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 4 – Code Coverage

 

NaturalSpec

“The idea of NaturalSpec is to give domain experts the possibility to express their scenarios directly in compilable Unit Test scenarios by using a Domain-specific language (DSL) for Unit Tests. NaturalSpec is completely written in F# – but you don’t have to learn F# to use it. You don’t even have to learn programming at all.”

NaturalSpec Homepage

Learn More about NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s “Getting Started” with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Testing QuickSort with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Using NaturalSpec to create a spec for C# projects

 

FsCheck

“FsCheck is a tool for testing .NET programs automatically. The programmer provides a specification of the program, in the form of properties which functions, methods or objects should satisfy, and FsCheck then tests that the properties hold in a large number of randomly generated cases.”

FsCheck Homepage

Learn More about FsCheck
Claudio Cherubino’s Random testing in F# with FsCheck
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 2 – QuickCheck and FsCheck
Kurt Schelfthout’s FsChecking dnAnalytics Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

 

FsStory

“FsStory is a library for writing executable user stories in F#. FsStory enables the developer to write user story scenarios (in Given/When/Then form) in F# code.”

FsStory Homepage

Learn More about FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s Fluent language in FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s FsStory, executable stories in F#

At this Saturday’s Code Camp I’ll be giving a brand new presentation on using F#.  The goal of this presentation is to have those attending leave with an idea of what F# can help them achieve today as well as instill a desire to know more.  This post contains my presentation materials as well as links to additional information on the topics covered.

 

Presentation Details

F# for Testing and Analytics will be held in the TBC (Technical Briefing Center) at 10:30am.

New England Code Camp 11 Information

I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately on the best way to get developers excited about F#.  By focusing less on the language’s details and more on what the language can help achieve I hope to impress upon those attending why F# is worth the effort.  The preliminary structure of the talk is as follows::

• Introduction
  • Announcing the New England F# User Group 
• Why F#?
  • Time Savings
  • Readability
  • Code Exploration
  • Robust Software
  • Power
• F# Testing Toolbox
  • xUnit.NET
  • TestDriven.NET and NCover
  • NaturalSpec
  • FsCheck
• A Real World Example
  • Exploring the Problem Space
  • Collect, Analyze, Report
  • Visualizing Data

Presentation Influences
John Hughes’s Paper: Why Functional Programming Matters
John Hughes’s Talk: FP – A Secret Weapon for Software Testing
Matthew Podwysocki’s 7 Part Series: Functional Programming Unit Testing

 

Announcing the New England F# User Group 

I’m proud to announce that we will be holding our first New England F# User Group meeting on Monday April 6th, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.  It will be held at the aptly named Microsoft NERD center.  I hope to see you there.

Visit the F# User Group Homepage for more information.

 

xUnit.NET

“About a year ago it became clear to myself and Brad Wilson that there were some very clear patterns of success (and failure) with the tools we were using for writing tests. Rather than repeating guidance about "do X" or "don't do Y", it seemed like it was the right time to reconsider the framework itself and see if we could codify some of those rules.”

xUnit.NET Homepage

Learn More about xUnit.NET
Matthew Podwysocki’s The Unit Testing Story in F# Revisited
Jim Burger’s Unit testing in F# with xUnit.NET
Harry Pierson’s Practical F# Parsing: Unit Testing

 

TestDriven.NET and NCover

“TestDriven.NET is a zero friction unit testing add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. The current release of TestDriven.NET supports multiple unit testing frameworks including NUnit, MbUnit and MS Team System and is fully compatible with all versions of the .NET Framework.”

TestDriven.NET Homepage (Includes a free version of NCover)
NCover Homepage

Learn More about TestDriven.NET and NCover
Matthew Podwysocki’s F# + TestDriven.NET + xUnit = Win 
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 4 – Code Coverage

 

NaturalSpec

“The idea of NaturalSpec is to give domain experts the possibility to express their scenarios directly in compilable Unit Test scenarios by using a Domain-specific language (DSL) for Unit Tests. NaturalSpec is completely written in F# – but you don’t have to learn F# to use it. You don’t even have to learn programming at all.”

NaturalSpec Homepage

Learn More about NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s “Getting Started” with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Testing QuickSort with NaturalSpec
Steffen Forkmann’s Using NaturalSpec to create a spec for C# projects

 

FsCheck

“FsCheck is a tool for testing .NET programs automatically. The programmer provides a specification of the program, in the form of properties which functions, methods or objects should satisfy, and FsCheck then tests that the properties hold in a large number of randomly generated cases.”

FsCheck Homepage

Learn More about FsCheck
Claudio Cherubino’s Random testing in F# with FsCheck
Matthew Podwysocki’s FP Unit Testing Part 2 – QuickCheck and FsCheck
Kurt Schelfthout’s FsChecking dnAnalytics Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

 

FsStory

“FsStory is a library for writing executable user stories in F#. FsStory enables the developer to write user story scenarios (in Given/When/Then form) in F# code.”

FsStory Homepage

Learn More about FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s Fluent language in FsStory
Gustaf Nilsson Kotte’s FsStory, executable stories in F#

I will be speaking at tomorrow’s Code Camp Hartford 2 on the topic of using F# for the Testing and Analysis of existing code. This talk will be composed of much of the same material I used at Code Camp Waltham 11, although I will be preparing additional introductory material as many of my Waltham attendees had no prior exposure to F#. 

I hope the audience will find this new introduction short and sweet.  In this case my goal will not be to teach F# per se, instead I would like to impress upon the audience the power of using functional programming constructs.

 

Presentation Details

F# for Testing and Analytics will be held in Room E-Echo at 10:30am.

As I often like to make changes up to the last minute, this post will be updated with my slides after the presentation. Slides are now available here.

 

The Plan

• Talk Introduction
• Shameless Plug: Upcoming F# User Group Speakers
• Survey the audience
• F# Introduction
• Why F#?
• Some Quick and Elegant Examples contrasted with C#
• F# Testing Toolbox
• xUnit.NET
• TestDriven.NET and NCover
• NaturalSpec
• FsCheck

For more information, see my post on the Code Camp Waltham 11 Presentation.  I wrote quite extensively in that post on most of the things I will be discussing in this talk.

It’s finally here.  After years of work, F# 2.0 is out and ready to change the way you program in .NET.  Come in for launch information, updates to projects written in F# and some great posts on actually using the language.

 

Don Syme’s F# 2.0 Released!

F# is a productive functional and object-oriented programming language for .NET that enables users to write simple code to solve complex problems. Its succinct syntax and powerful type inference lets users stay closer to the domain they are working in, and the integration into .NET and Visual Studio gives rich access to the expansive .NET platform.

 

Other Posts on the F# Launch

Rob Knies’s F#: Putting the ‘Fun’ into ‘Functional’
Tim Anderson’s Why Microsoft F# is worth exploring
Andre Burdette’s F#: Microsoft’s new functional language

 

Lisa Feigenbaum’s VS 2010 Keyboard Shortcut Posters Now Available for VB, C#, F# & C++

The Visual Studio keyboard shortcut posters are always very popular and are now available for Visual Studio 2010! Please choose the one that corresponds to your choice of Visual Studio Development Settings. Print out a poster to place on the wall, or a quick reference card to keep on your desk.

 

Chris Smith’s Good News and Sad News - Leaving Microsoft

For me at least, the excitement and buzz of the Visual Studio 2010 launch will be short lived. Earlier this month I’ve accepted a position at another software company and will be leaving Microsoft. […]

However, I will still be part of the F# community and you will definitely see a second edition of Programming F# when the time comes.  In fact, next Tuesday 4/20 I’ll be giving a talk: Writing a Java to x86 Compiler in F# at 11:00AM PST.

 

Steffen Forkmann’s “FAKE – F# Make” and NaturalSpec 1.0 Released

Yesterday Microsoft released the RTM versions of Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0 and F# 2.0.0.0 and so it is time to announce the first official releases of “Fake – F# Make” and NaturalSpec. Both projects are now compatible with Visual Studio 2010 RC and RTM and the corresponding F# versions.

 

F# Refactor (No Release Yet, Check out the Repository)

Deisgned to bring Code Refactoring capabilities to the F# Language in Visual Studio 2010.

 

Brian McNamara’s Using VS2010 to edit F# source code (and a little LOGO EDSL) and Fun with turtle-graphics in F#

The code on the screen during the video is a little EDSL (Embedded Domain-Specific Language) for a subset of LOGO.  The full code is below; you can just copy it into an F# application project to run it. 

 

Brian McNamara and Chris Smith’s Alt.NET Workshop slides and code

Chris and I each had our own slide deck, so to go in order you’ll have to switch back and forth between the two decks, like we did during the talk (Chris’s intro, my part on functional programming, Chris’s section on OO programming, my part on Async, Chris’s case study).  At the end of my deck there’s also some bonus slides on units of measure that we didn’t have time for. 

 

David Worthington’s ‘Midori’ concepts materialize in .NET

"Midori is an attempt to create a new foundation for the operating system that runs ‘inside the box,’ on the desktop and in the rack.

 

Neil Carrier’s Sliding Block Puzzle in F# and WPF and
Simple WPF Animation

I realized that I wanted something more visual with which to test my search algorithms. I have also been wanting to learn how to write WPF applications using F#. To that end, I offer the following F#/WPF application of the famous Fifteen Puzzle, the ancestor of all sliding-block puzzles.

 

Neil Carrier’s Generic Binary Heap

I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a priority queue for my A* search, so I decided to code a generic heap class in F#. The F# code below is largely a translation from Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms in C (Parts 1-4).

 

Phillip Trelford’s What’s happening? Loosely coupled events

For example if you wanted to publish an event from any window that could be observed by any other window without them all having intimate knowledge of each other.

 

Phillip Trelford’s Implementing IObservable and extending Observable

Following on from my post yesterday on implementing loosely coupled events; the following somewhat longer F# sample provides a simple System.IObservable<T> implementation for event consumers.

 

Daniel Mohl’s A DHT in F#: Using Higher Order Functions for the Service Operation Calls

In my last post, I provided a start to a distributed hash table in F# using WCF.  One of the major limitations of that example was that only two nodes could ever be on the node network at a given time.

 

Daniel Mohl’s Talking to CouchDB via F# and Symbiote

Alex Robson recently announced a set of libraries that, among other things, makes talking with CouchDB from a .NET language very easy. […] As you can see, interacting with CouchDB via F# and Symbiote is a snap.

 

Vladimir Matveev’s MailboxProcessors: Erlang-style concurrency

MailboxProcessor is combination of message queue and message handler build atop of Asyncs infrastructure.

 

Mark Pearl’s F# and the useful infinite Sequence (I think)

So the question is begged - how would you create a sequence that you are sure will be large enough to hold the solution to the problem? Well… You can’t know!

 

Mark Needham’s F#: The ‘defaultArg’ function

While reading through an old blog post by Matthew Podwysocki about writing F# code in a functional rather than imperative way I came across the 'defaultArg' function which I haven't seen previously.