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F# and Scala in Lovely Lausanne

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A quick update to my last posts: F# 1.9.1 is undergoing a few minor updates as we take on some excellent feedback from our users inside Microsoft.

In the meantime, I've headed to EPFL in Lausanne to spend 3 weeks skiing visiting the Scala team. I've known Martin Odersky, the designer of Scala, for some time now, and his joint work on generics in Java formed a major part of the background to our work on generics for C# and .NET 2.0. Indeed, I was last in Lausanne in 2001 when I presented .NET Generics to Martin and his team. 

For me F# is not just about the language, but about advancing typed functional programming in general, and so one of the key things for me is the chance to share ideas with other researchers in programming languages. Tomorrow I'll be presenting to the Scala group on F# active patterns as implemented in F# 1.9, a topic we presented two weeks ago to the C# team in Redmond, and which I've also been discussing with Simon Peyton-Jones in Cambridge. 

This is joint work with Gregory Neverov and James Margetson. We'll be putting out a technical report on this topic next week, but more importantly you'll be able to use the feature in earnest when F# 1.9.1 is released!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2007
    Hi Don, It's great to hear that F# 1.9 is coming along I was wondering what the status of "Expert F#" book you're co-authoring was. Are you planning to cover the 1.9 feature set in the first edition? I guess I'm asking slyly if the book has been delayed at all? I'm super keen to read it! Kind regards, tom

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2007
    It's very interesting to hear about the collaboration between F# and Scala teams. But what about Nemerle(www.nemerle.org) team? I understand that Nemerle seems to be F# rival. If possible, can you advance your opinion on Nemerle? I'm waiting impatiently for the 1.9.1 release. Thank you in advance.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2007
    Please remind the Scala team that while their language is wonderful, their syntax more than takes away from the beauty of the language.  I just have to type too many characters to get something simple done!

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2007
    Just to let you know that we are eagerly awaiting 1.9. Please release soon :-)