• [3:15] What is Try F#?
• [6:07] What is information-rich programming?
• [17:53] What are some of the benefits of F# in Data Science and the semantic web?
• [21:11]  What can I expect to see on Try F#.org?

Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes or RSS

If you're interested in learning more about the products or solutions discussed in this episode, click on any of the below links for free, in-depth information:

Websites:

• Learn, Create, and Share with Try F#. Get Started here

Blogs & Articles:

• Jerry Nixon’s Blog
• Matt Harrington’s Blog

Try F# demonstrates the power of F# to solve real-world analytical programming and information-rich problems by providing a web experience to help you learn the F# language, create programs, and share information—quickly and easily.

You all know how much I like "learning resources." Also you know how much I like highlighting different things, things that help you think a little outside of the normal, day to day grind.

Today's post satisfies both itches...

Try F#—Data Console to Big and Broad Data (Microsoft Research Connections Blog)

Try F# enables users to learn F# through new tutorials that focus on solving real-world problems, including analytical programming quandaries of the sort that are encountered in finance and data science. But Try F# is much more than a set of tutorials. It lets users write code in the browser and share it with others on the web to help grow a community of F# developers.

This latest release of Try F# is an evolution that keeps the tool in synch with the new experiences and information-rich programming features that are available in F# 3.0, the latest version of the language. The tutorials incorporate many domains, and help users understand F#’s new powerful “type providers” for data and service programming in the browser-based experience.

Try F# (Microsoft Research)

New Try F#

By working with the community, we have enhanced the “learn” experience, now complete with sample materials to get you started. Try F# now includes “create and share” experiences that help you write simple code to solve complex problems and then easily share snippets or sample packs with others.

F# communities make it easy to get involved:

• Microsoft F# discussion forum
• F# on Stack Overflow
• F# on DeveloperFusion

Try F#

Try F#/Learn

Why F#?

Simple Code for Complex Problems

F# is expressive and concise, which allows developers to implement their algorithms more directly. This means less code to read and maintain.

Rapid Prototyping

Using F# Interactive, code can be executed immediately without first compiling, which enables fluid problem exploration. Developers can use F# Interactive to iteratively refine algorithms to production quality.

Fewer Bugs

Case studies and user reports consistently show that F#'s strong type system reduces software bugs. Units of Measure further increase these benefits by preventing code from accidentally combining such elements as inches and centimeters, dollars and euros, or any custom units.

Seamless Interoperability

F# interoperates seamlessly with C#, and F# can be used with HTML5, JavaScript and other web standards. F# type providers can be used to integrate data sources and thousands of statistical libraries from packages such as R. The NuGet package environment provides over 8,000 new packages. Enterprises can use F# effectively without having to use different libraries and frameworks, and can leverage their existing assets and domain knowledge.

Efficient Execution

F# features modern, high-performance just-in-time (JIT) compilation to native code. F# code runs unchanged on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems by using the instructions available on the target architecture. The resulting code runs at the speeds much faster than languages such as Python, JavaScript or R, and in some cases significantly faster than C#.

Reduced Complexity

F# makes it easier to write functional programs, which eliminates complex time and state dependencies. This helps prevent bugs, makes unit testing more straightforward, simplifies refactoring, and promotes code reuse.

...

Ready to get coding? Think you have to install a bunch of stuff to get started? Nope! You can get started learning and coding F# right now!

So get learning and coding already!

• [1:02] Visual Studio Launch Event (If you missed it)
• [2:42] Windows Store now open to all developers in 120 markets (Ted Dworkin)
• [3:52] Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop is Here (Jennifer Leaf)
• [4:51] Announcing F# Tools for Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web! (Visual Studio FSharp Team)
• [5:21] Welcome to the 2013 Imagine Cup Season!
• [7:40] Web Matrix 2 RTW, WebMatrix 2 is Released (Vishal Joshi)
• [10:20] WebMatrix 2 is Released! + New Windows Azure Features (Faith Allington)
• [11:39] WebMatrix and Node Package Manager (Justin Beckwith)
• [12:44] Code Snippets for Windows Store Apps
• [13:28] 5 Points Developers Need to Know about Windows RT (Anoop Madhusudanan)
• [14:30] Want some //real/ guidance for ARM development in Windows 8? Here it is. (Jerry Nixon), Metro style app development for Windows RT PCs
• [15:25] Integrating your cloud service with the file picker contracts (Scott Hoogerwerf)
• [16:47] Modern UI Icons (Austin Andrews) [Found Via: Dan Rigby - Windows 8 Developer Links – 2012-09-11]
• [17:15] Web Essentials 1.1 released (Mads Kristensen)
• [18:17] Updated Windows Azure Reference Architecture (Clint Edmonson)
• [19:00] Attachments.me connecting SkyDrive with Gmail and tips for other SkyDrive developers (Dare Obasanjo)

Picks of the Week!

• Brian's Pick of the Week:[20:11] iOS, iPhone & iPad storyboarding
• Jeff's Pick of the Week:[21:37] Enjoy A Cup Of CoffeeScript

Today's project mixes Metro style app development, Portable Libraries, C#, F# and the always fun to play PacMan!

Pacman Tiles

Back in January I built a sample Pacman maze script in F# to use at a Pacman Kata evening with the F#unctional Londoners group. Coincidentally there’s another Coding Kata this Thursday 26th July at Skills Matter. Anyway a couple of weeks ago I started playing with the sample again on the train to and from work, filling in some of the gameplay.

You can play the latest version with your cursor keys and 9 lives below:

Windows 8

As the sample runs in Silverlight I thought I’d also try it out on it’s cousin WinRT. WinRT lets you build Metro apps on Windows 8. The transition code wise has been pretty straight forward and I now have a tile for the game appearing on my Windows 8 start page:

Multi-targeting

Multi-targeting Silverlight and WinRT is the route I decided to go down which allowed me to develop the game on my laptop running Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2010. Then I periodically tested it out on a desktop box running the Windows 8 Preview Release using Visual Studio 2012. Visual Studio 2012 does run on Windows 7, however WinRT does not.

The WinRT version of the app is implemented in F# and C#. The game part is written in F# as a portable library and the plumbing in C#. There’s a great walkthrough on Creating a Portable F# Library over on MSDN which describes this direction in some detail.

...

Full Source

The full source code to the game is publicly available on BitBucket:

• https://bitbucket.org/ptrelford/pacman

A single file playable script version is also available on F# Snippets:

• http://fssnip.net/cZ

One interesting thing was how it scaled. For example, here's the app snapped, where it remained fully playable;

Here's a snap of the Solution, showing off how F# and C# were mixed, using a Portable Library project.

One of the meta items in the project was how F# was used to generate the PacMan logo's/images.

#if INTERACTIVE
#r "System.Drawing.dll"
#endif

open System
open System.IO
open System.Drawing
open System.Drawing.Imaging

let drawPacman (bitmap:Bitmap, x:int, y:int, size:int) =
    let width, height = bitmap.Width, bitmap.Height
    let graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap)
    do  graphics.Clear(Color.Black)
    graphics.FillEllipse(Brushes.Yellow,x,y,size,size)
    let points = 
        let right = x + size
        [|right,y + size/2 - size/4;right,y + size/2 + size/4; x + size/2, y + size/2|]
        |> Array.map (fun (x,y) -> PointF(float32 x,float32 y))
    graphics.FillPolygon(Brushes.Black,points)

open System.Windows.Forms

let show (bitmap:Bitmap) =
    let form = new Form()
    let box = new PictureBox(Image = bitmap)
    box.Width <- bitmap.Width
    box.Height <- bitmap.Height
    form.Width <- bitmap.Width
    form.Height <- bitmap.Height + 32
    form.Controls.Add(box)
    form.Show()

//let root = @"C:\Users\Moon\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\pacman\PacMan.Xaml\Assets\"
let root = @"C:\Users\Phil\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\pacman\PacMan.Xaml\Assets\"

do  // Logo
    
    let path =root + "Logo.png"
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(path)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 42, 38, 64)
    bitmap.Save("PacMan_Logo.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // SmallLogo
    let path = root + "SmallLogo.png"
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(path)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 3, 3, 24)
    bitmap.Save("PacMan_SmallLogo.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // StoreLogo
    let path = root + "StoreLogo.png"
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(path)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 5, 5, 40)
    bitmap.Save("PacMan_StoreLogo.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // SplashScreen
    let path = root + "SplashScreen.png"
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(path)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 200, 42, 214)
    bitmap.Save("PacMan_SplashScreen.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // Icon 16x16
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(16,16)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 1, 1, 14)
    bitmap.Save("Icon16x16.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // Icon 32x32
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(32,32)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 2, 2, 28)
    bitmap.Save("Icon32x32.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // Icon 48x48
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(48,48)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 3, 3, 42)
    bitmap.Save("Icon48x48.png", ImageFormat.Png)

do  // Icon 128x128
    let bitmap = new Bitmap(128,128)
    drawPacman(bitmap, 8, 8, 112)
    bitmap.Save("Icon128x128.png", ImageFormat.Png)
    show bitmap

Okay, what about for the non-Metro dev's? Well there's VS2010/SilverLight, Windows Phone and XAML fun for you too!

If you're looking to expand your development language repertoire and looking for fun way to do it, looking for examples of how to mix and match C# and F#, looking for examples of F# and SilverLight or finally F# in a Metro world, this project has all that and more...

Here, Erik interviews Donna Malayeri (F# PM and Lang.NEXT speaker chair), Gilad Bracha (Dart) and Luke Hoban (ECMAScript). The conversation spans several topics, of course.

Tune in. Enjoy.

About Boris

Boris Jabes has spent the last seven years at Microsoft working on developer tools that focus on the needs of cutting-edge native developers. Today, his team is working to make Visual Studio more awesome for game development. Boris was previously responsible for improving the C++ IDE experience.

About Jerry

Jerry Nixon is a Microsoft Developer Evangelist in Colorado. He has been developing and designing on the Microsoft platform for 15 years. He speaks at universities, events and groups on Kinect, XAML, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. Most of Jerry's days are spent teaching his three daughters Star Trek character backstories and episode plots.

Boris Jabes and Jerry Nixon recommend you check out

• What's New in Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Download the Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Developing a Metro style game with C++ and DirectX (Marble Maze)
• Jerry Nixon's blog
• Follow Jerry on Twitter

• [1:01] Visual Studio Ultimate Roadmap (Jason Zander), What's New in Visual Studio 11 Beta Unit Testing (Peter Provost)
• [3:44] ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Razor and Open Source (Scott Guthrie), ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages v2 (Razor) now all open source with contributions (Scott Hanselman), http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com
• [5:52] Build on the Team Foundation Service [TFSPreview] (Aaron Bjork)
• [6:48] Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update Now Available (Cliff Simpkins)
• [8:43] Extending the Visual Studio 11 Web Browser Chooser and Browse With Menu to include Developer Profiles (Scott Hanselman)
• [9:59] Windows Azure for the ASP.NET Developer Series (Peter Laudati)
• [11:15] Metro XAML and HTML Control Sample Packs (Two downloads, bunches of controls sampled, lots of code examples, hours of...) (Greg Duncan), XAML controls sample pack, HTML controls sample pack
• [12:20] Activating Windows 8 contracts in your app (Windows 8 app developer blog)
• [14:28] 5 1/2 F# features every C# programmer should lust after (Mindscape)
• [16:57] Schema Compare Improvements (Bill Gibson)
• [18:05] AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure (Jamie Thomson)
• [18:52] Techdays 2012 the Netherlands, Using Windows Azure with Windows Phone, iOS, Android, and Windows 8 (Nick Harris)

Picks of the Week!

• Brian's Pick of the Week: [19:24] Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 (Den Delimarsky)
• Dan's Pick of the Week: [20:05] Make Mayhem

Register here!

We have a great cast of characters speaking at this year's event. Experts and iconoclasts include:

Andrei Alexandrescu, Facebook

Andy Gordon, Microsoft

Andy Moran, Galois 

Donna Malayeri, Microsoft

Dustin Campbell, Microsoft

Erik Meijer, Microsoft

Gilad Bracha, Google

Herb Sutter, Microsoft

James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington

Jeroen Frijters, Sumatra Software

John Cook, University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Kim Bruce, Pomona College

Kunle Olukotun, Stanford

Luke Hoban, Microsoft

Mads Torgersen, Microsoft

Martin Odersky, EPFL, Typesafe

Martyn Lovell, Microsoft

Peter Alvaro, University of California at Berkeley

Robert Griesemer, Google

Walter Bright, Digital Mars

William Cook, University of Texas at Austin

Sessions will be recorded and C9 interviews will take place!

Links:

•       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net

•       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/

 Links:

•       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net

•       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/

Links:

•      Microsoft F# Developer Center,http://www.fsharp.net

•      Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/

Books

•      “F# Survival Guide”, http://www.ctocorner.com/fsharp/book/

•      “Programming F#”, http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596801359/

•      “Real World Functional Programming”,http://functional-programming.net/

•      “Beginning F#”, http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430223898 

•      “F# for Scientists”, http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470242116.html

•      “Visual F# 2010 for Technical Computing”,http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_for_technical_computing/index.html

•      “Expert F# 2.0”, http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430224310

By Peter Sestoft, Professor IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

In this second part, Peter finishes the first "demo" lecture of the F#-based programming language course (started in part 1, found here:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/martinesmann/Teaching-programming-language-concepts-with-F-part-1/.

Peter Sestoft at ITU.dk: http://www.itu.dk/people/sestoft

Lecture notes and other downloads: http://www.itu.dk/courses/BPRD/E2010/

By Peter Sestoft, Professor IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

In this first part, Peter introduces the curriculum, lecture plan and lecture notes for the course "Programs as data" that uses the functional programming concepts in F# to teach students language concepts and implementation details.

Peter also begins on the first lecture (continued in the  second part, found here:http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/martinesmann/Teaching-programming-language-concepts-with-F-part-2/).

Peter Sestoft at ITU.dk: http://www.itu.dk/people/sestoft

Lecture notes and other downloads: http://www.itu.dk/courses/BPRD/E2010/

Part 1
Part 3

Get the slides for this lecture series here.

Read Don's Blog

Here is a bit of his speech recognition code using the System.Speech.dll:

let recognizerEvent = getWordRecognizer()

// Main handler - convert spoken text into RL commands
let handleWord spokenText =
    printfn "Recognized Word: %s" spokenText
    let action = 
        match spokenText with
        | "up"  // Has a hard time recognizing this :(
        | "north" -> MoveUp(20)
        | "down"  -> MoveDown(20)
        | "left"  -> MoveLeft(20)
        | "right" -> MoveRight(20)

        | "fire"  -> Fire

        | _ -> NoOp
        
    performAction rocketLauncher action |> ignore

// Exit handler - specifically look for exit/quit
let terminateLoop = ref false
let terminateLoopHandler = function | "exit" 
                                    | "quit" -> terminateLoop := true
                                    | _      -> ()

// Hook up event handlers
recognizerEvent.Add(handleWord)
recognizerEvent.Add(terminateLoopHandler)

while terminateLoop.Value = false do
    System.Threading.Thread.Yield() |> ignore
()

Chris happily provided the source code as well, RocketLauncher_v1.0.zip. 

• Try Fine in your web browser at http://rise4fun.com/fine!
• FINE home page
• Read the article about FINE

 The Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE) coordinates Microsoft's research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.

In this video, programming writer, Gordon Hogenson explains and gives examples of lists in F#. 

You can also learn more in the topic Lists (F#)

Kathleen McGrath
Visual Studio User Education
http://blogs.msdn.com/kathleen
Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey

You can also learn more in the topic Discriminated Unions (F#)

Kathleen McGrath
Visual Studio User Education
http://blogs.msdn.com/kathleen