Visual F# Programmers where are you?

[EntityX]

I noticed in Visual Studio 2010 there is a new language Visual F#(as far as I know it's new). Any Visual F# programmers out there. How do you like it. What are the advantages. I expect they'll add a new section on VBForums for it.

[techgnome]

?? "New" ?? F# Been around longer than that... It's been available as an addon I believe for a few years. If you pick up the latest edition of MSDN Magazine (April edition) there's an F# intro for .NET Developers that explains how to make the transition...

-tg

[DeanMc]

It's essentially a functional programming language. I have read some tutorials but haven't actually budgeted any time to learn it (So much to do so little time and all that jazz). I believe Jmc has had a play around with it though!

[EntityX]

I'm obviously no expert on what's new or not in programming languages. We can say that it's new for Visual Studio. I expect to stay with Visual Basic and concentrate all my programming efforts there perhaps for a good while but some day maybe I'll try it or some other languages out. There's a certain application of mine that I'm devoting all my programming time to. When I'm thoroughly satisfied with it then I'll likely begin a new application perhaps in VB again or perhaps in something else.

[DeanMc]

Well if it is C# once you get over the fact that the syntax s different then there is not much else to learn as it is the same framework. The same can be said for F# to a degree but Function Programming is by definition different to any other procedural programming language. Once you learn the nuances of programming in a functional language you will then have the whole framework at your disposal once more.

[JuggaloBrotha]

F# isn't anything new, I've seen it around since 2003 (it may be older than that) but it is a .Net language and I fiddled with it for a day back in VS 2003.

[03myersd]

I messed around with it for a few hours a couple of months back, and I wasn't too fond of it. When it comes to functional languages I will stick to Haskell.

[arunb]

what's functional language and how is it different from VB

[minitech]

Is that one of those languages with few language constructs? Someone told me about Haskell and I have no idea how it would work if there weren't an "if". So there has to be at least one language construct.

I saw an F# sample, it looks reaaaally confusing.

[03myersd]

Haskell example that takes in a list of numbers an outputs a list of numbers which is the previous but multiplied by two. e.g.

[1,2,3,4,5] goes in and [2,4,6,8,10] comes out.

doubles:: [int] -> [int]
doubles xs = [2*x | x <- xs]

First line declares the types and the second is the actual function.
The function is doubles, and the xs is the list that goes in. It outputs 2*x where x is taken from the list xs.