Articles filed in category 'Functional Programming'

You can access just about any data with type providers, whether in XML, JSON, or APIs. Rachel shows us how, plus a nifty new Swagger type provider.

If you’re lucky enough to be involved in building a new enterprise system, you’ll want to check this out. Rachel takes a look at how the company where she works made some interesting—and forward-looking—decisions, and she shows us the benefits of microservices while she’s at it.

F#, the latest member of the Visual Studio family of languages, offers some enticing advantages over C# and Visual Basic, stemming from its functional-object fusion nature.Originally a research language from Microsoft Research, F# has long been a “secret weapon” in the arsenal of .NET programmers for doing statistical- and mathematical-heavy coding. More recently, however, a growing number of developers have begun to see the inherent advantages implicit in writing functi...onal code, particularly in the areas of concurrency. The buzz has begun to approach interesting levels, particularly on the heels of an announcement last year from the head of the Microsoft Developer Division, Somasegar, that F# would be “productized” and fully supported by Microsoft as a whole, suddenly removing the stigma and licensing restrictions that surround research projects.See More

The key to understanding lambda expressions is understanding delegates. Delegates play a tremendously important role in developing applications for the .NET Framework, especially when using C# or Visual Basic. Events, a special application of delegates, are used all over the framework. And the application and possibilities of delegates has only grown over time. C# 2.0 introduced the concept of anonymous methods and C# 3.0 and VB 9 take anonymous methods to the next level... with lambda expressions. This article reviews the evolution of delegates and examines possibilities and syntax of delegates and lambdas in .NET 3.5.See More

.Finalize() column for Sept/Oct 2007

If you are a .NET software developer, you have heard of F#. You may have read an article, seen a talk at a user group, or otherwise heard the buzz. However, if those means of reaching you have failed, at the very least, you have noticed it conspicuously appear in the list of languages you can base a solution on in Visual Studio 2010. If you write code on the .NET Framework, you would have to be living under a rock to have not heard of F#.

Writing software is hard, particularly when the tools you use force you to think at too low a level; it’s time to start thinking about changing the way you write code… by making it easier to write code.Taking on new ways to program doesn’t always mean tossing away your favorite programming language or environment. Sometimes it just means taking a new look at how you’re using your language and trying out a few new ideas. It’s time to take a hard look at your favorite lang...uage and see if it’s possible to “fall in love all over again”.See More

You’ve been plodding along, nose to the grindstone, and you might not have realized that there are some useful tools out there that can make your .NET projects a little more fun to build. Rachel explores Paket, F# Formatting, and FAKE.

Functional programming is all the rage and Microsoft's foray into the functional world is called F#. Rachel introduces you to this first-class functional language with the ability to harness the rich .NET ecosystem.

Rachel takes a close look at F# mailbox processors to help you efficiently process messages. She covers replying, scanning (for a particular message or subject), and coordinating multiple agents, and makes it easy once you know which connections to make.