In Part 3 of this 3-part lecture series, Dr. Don Syme elaborates further on:

Patterns
Object Basics
Imperative Programming

Part 1
Part 2

Get the slides for this lecture series here.
Read Don’s Blog

The F# Team says: We’re excited to announce that we have made available a new release of F# along with the Visual Studio 2010 RC and a matching February 2010 F# CTP for VS2008. 

F# is Microsoft’s first functional programming language to be included as one of Visual Studio’s official set of languages. F# is a succinct, efficient, expressive functional/object-oriented programming language under joint development by Microsoft Developer Division and Microsoft Research. During the course of Erik Meijer’s fantastic lecture series on functional programming fundamentals several of you asked for examples of specific topics in F#.

In part 2 of this 3 part lecture series (see part 1 here), Dr. Syme provides an overview of the following topics:

Functional Data
Pattern Matching
Imperative Basics
Sequences

NOTE: Announcing the F# February 2010 Release!

The F# Team says: We’re excited to announce that we have made available a new release of F# along with the Visual Studio 2010 RC and a matching February 2010 F# CTP for VS2008. 

In addition, we’ve launched the F# PowerPack as a CodePlex project, enabling this set of valuable F# extensions to continue to grow and improve separately from the stable core F# releases.

Get the slides for this lecture series here.

Read Don’s Blog

• Sara’s leaving the CodePlex team to work as a Developer Evangelist
• Nitin Bharti – 7-Part video series on using Microsoft Expression Blend, via Alvin Ashcraft
  • Interesting because: It’s a free set of videos that cover the essentials of using Blend, including controls, data-binding, animation, and more
• John Papa – Creating Custom Pre-loaders/splash screens in Silverlight
  • Interesting because: There are certain things you can and can’t do in Silverlight’s splash screen
• Channel 9 Team – Simplifying how to share content on Channel 9
  • Interesting because: Most people didn’t discover the share feature on C9 and those who did used primarily used Twitter and Facebook
• Don Syme - Introduction to F# Lecture Series
  • Interesting because: It’s a three part series with Don Syme who created the F# language
• Greg Duncan – The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts
  • Interesting because: This is arguably the most comprehensive list of Windows 7 shortcuts
• Code Project – Manoj Kumar – Gesture recognition for Touch Devices
  • Interesting because:  This library helps take raw multitouch data from Windows 7 and interpret specific touch gestures
• Chris Pietschmann – Turn your Windows 7 PC into a Wifi hotspot
  • Interesting because: It’s a free, open source 100% C# app that enables you to make your PC a wireless hotspot (great for travel)
• Jason Zander – Visualizing Dependency Graphs using Visual Studio 2010
  • Interesting because: Jason walks through how to use the Dependency graphing tools and discusses DGML (Dependency Graph Markup Language) an XML representation of dependency graphs that Visual Studio extensions could use to visualize dependencies  
• Wes Hutchins – Visual Studio Gallery Beta 2 extensions to be unpublished
  • Interesting because: If you use or have created an extension in the visualstudiogallery, realize that all beta 2 extensions will be removed
• Windows Azure Team - Windows Azure Drive and beta SDK available
  • Interesting because: Azure Drive enables you to mount Azure as a drive  

Picks of the week:

• Dan’s pick: The Top 20 Xbox Live Indie Games for 2009
• Sara’s Pick: Hurricane WhoDat – The Saints are going to the Super Bowl for the first time ever, and whodatnation is one of the most entertaining sites for Saint fans 

Dr. Don Syme is a principal researcher in MSR Cambridge. He has a rich history in programming language research, design, and implementation (C# generics being one of his most recognized implementations), and is the principle creator of F#. Who better to lecture on the topic than Don? This three part series will serve as an introduction to F#, including insights into the rationale behind the history and creation of Microsoft’s newest language.

Get the slides for this lecture here.

Watch Part 1.

Read Don’s Blog.