Community Blogs

This blog has been abandoned for the longest time :-$ but I’ve got great news to try and re-inaugurate it (again): it’s just been announced that beta 2 for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will be available the day after tomorrow, i.e. on October 21st ; moreover, we now have a firm date for the launch of the final versions of these products: March 22nd 2010 . There is a lot of cool stuff in the new versions of Visual Studio and .NET Framework but my personal favorites (at least for the time being :-) are: The inclusion of dynamic programming elements in C# and other framework languages. Good things from languages like Python, Groovy, or Ruby are now an integral part of C#. The inclusion of F# as a first level language of the .NET Framework...

Functional programming isn’t a new concept. There is Scheme, Haskell and a bunch of other really cool languages. But new on the block is F#. F# is Microsoft’s stab at creating a functional programming in the .NET world as a first-class language. Functional programming paradigms are increasingly important to all .NET developers. This post will detail the functional elements (in my mind) of the Maybe Monad, something I’m sure everyone has written in some way or another (ok maybe not everyone, but there are certainly a lot of implementations out there in C#). But let’s discuss the application, functionally, of the maybe monad. The Basics There are three areas of the maybe monad that are really important. The first is the concept of “Nothing” and...

I spent this weekend toying with Microsoft StreamInsight bits. I have a few blog posts planned for the next few days that tackle very specific CEP patterns but I figure it might make sense to start by highlighting some of the features I think differentiate Microsoft's StreamInsight from other CEP technologies in the market. Here is a n initial summary of the features I really like about Microsoft's StreamInsight: What I like LINQ A continuous query language is an essential component of any CEP platform...( read more ) Read More...

Recently, there has been an effort launched called the “Anti-If Campaign” in which they deride the use of if statements and instead, focus on Object Oriented Principles in order to create more flexible designs. Now certainly, I have a sympathetic ear to this cause as I’ve seen code that literally walks off the side of the screen due to nesting of if statements. Pattern matching to me, especially at the top level of the function is actually quite beautiful in a way, such as the implementations in Haskell: -- Haskell lucas :: Int -> Integer lucas 0 = 2 lucas 1 = 1 lucas n = lucas (n - 2 ) + lucas (n - 1 ) And in Erlang, this also holds true: % Erlang -module (lucascalc). -export ([lucas / 1 ]). lucas( 0 ) -> 2 ; lucas( 1 ) -> 1 ; lucas...

Following my previous post, I’ve decided to start blogging some examples of the use of Axum on distributed programming scenarios. The purpose of these samples is not to detail the specific features of the Axum language but rather to highlight some practical scenarios that can be improved by the combination of Axum and other technologies. As any other CLR-based language, Axum will require to interoperate seamlessly with other Microsoft technologies in order to gain adoption in the real world. Distributed...( read more ) Read More...

Last week Microsoft announced the first version of Axum. In a nutshell, Axum is a domain specific language (DSL) for modeling coordination and concurrency scenarios in .NET applications. Although Axum is still an incubation project and there is no final word on whether it will be productized, we should all agree that this represents a remarkable effort to enhance the .NET language ecosystem to embrace the next generation of applications based on multi-core architectures. At first, Axum might seem...( read more ) Read More...

Earlier this week, I was challenged on Twitter to give a practical example of currying in C#. This was a great question, because outside of the normal add and multiply people tend to do, there isn’t much out there. This was also a question brought up as I spoke at the Philly.NET Code Camp this past weekend as well about good practical examples. In this post, I hope to use one example that I used during my talk on Functional Programming at the Continuous Improvement in Software Conference in Austin last October. At some point or another, this has been part of my woefully ignored Functional C# library on MSDN Code Gallery. This needs an update and I’m hoping that I get to that soon enough. Partially Apply or Curry? Let’s walk through a simple...

Last Day to Save 50%! Special Offer for ASP.NET MVC in Action Readers Last week we gave you an update on ASP.NET MVC in Action-- along with a coupon good for 50% off on several closely-related Manning books. That special offer expires today! To save half on the books below, just enter code aspmvc50 in the Promotional Code field when you check out at www.manning.com . Microsoft Entity Framework in Action --Manage application data in a layered application using the Microsoft Entity Framework. This book reviews the ORM model and shows you how EF offers a smooth transition from a traditional ADO.NET approach. C# in Depth --Guru Jon Skeet teaches you high-value C# techniques like reusing algorithms in a type-safe way with generics and expanding existing...

Last Day to Save 50%! Special Offer for C# in Depth Readers Last week we told you about a special offer for C# in Depth readers only. That half off coupon expires today! To save 50% on these closely-related books, just enter sharp50 in the Promotional Code box on checkout at www.manning.com .  Microsoft Entity Framework in Action --Manage data in a layered application using the Microsoft Entity Framework. This book reviews the ORM model and shows you how EF offers a smooth transition from a traditional ADO.NET approach. Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action --TFS 2008 is a state-of-the-art management system for team software development. This book goes well beyond the basics to help you tackle real-world problems. Building Domain Specific...

When I was last out in Redmond, I had the opportunity to sit down with Erik Meijer to speak about something for which I’m passionate, functional programming.  After such recent appearances on Channel9 as Joe Duffy and Anders Hejlsberg , I was quite flattered to be asked to appear.  I gave a short as possible introduction to start talking about any number of topics including my passion for functional programming, the Haskell and F# languages, and many other ideas. One of the topics I talked about was monads.  In some of my previous posts, I talked about them extensively in my Much Ado About Monads series.  When I got the email that this video was posted, I was already writing my series installment on the asynchronous monad...