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#

A bit of a slow week.  Perhaps some are out playing in the recently fantastic weather instead of blogging about functional programming.  My favorites this week were Paul Hudak’s talk on Haskell, Jason Olson’s Channel9 discussion, Niklas Gustafssons’s Actors in F# and Kurt Schelfthout’s Testing DSLs with FsCheck.

 

Paul Hudak on InfoQ - Haskell

An interview that begins with a discussion of when to introduce difficult Haskell concepts like monads, moves to a discussion of the philosophy of higher order programming.

Paul Hudak, as a principal designer of Haskell, explains FP topics with a passion few others could.  Also, I’m curious about this idea of arrows (Freyd-categories) as opposed to monads.

 

Jason Olson’s on Channel9 - Composing Programming Languages

We talk about his [Lang.NET F# and OO] presentations and his perspectives on object orientation, F# and his own language.

As it seems impossible to pin down exactly what OO is, perhaps we should try to categorize it’s subcomponents across different languages.

 

Niklas Gustafsson on Actors in F#

One of the advantages of this model over the Axum model is that any number of clients can communicate with an actor, all that is needed is access to the mailbox reference.

I must beg to differ with Niklas on one of his stated disadvantages of the Actor model.  It would be easy enough to include a “closing down state” in your Actor FSA.  The inability to statically check your agreements is correct though.  I’d be interested in seeing a simple Axum sample which could handle N clients and still be statically checked.

 

Kurt Schelfthout on How to test DSLs (and: FsChecking FsCheck)

It occurred to me that (domain specific) languages seem difficult to test using traditional unit tests: after all, the usage possibilities are far greater for a language than for, say, a typical user interface.

An extremely clever way to test DSLs.

 

I understand it is exceedingly painful to sign up for an account to leave a simple comment.  That given, I am still trying to figure out a solution to my spam problem.  For now, if you would like to comment and don’t wish to set up an account, please email me your comment and I will manually post it here.

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.