[nycbug-talk] instructions for building f# on freebsd

[Pete Wright]

On 05/17/13 07:09, Justin Dearing wrote:
> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Pete Wright <pete at nomadlogic.org
> <mailto:pete at nomadlogic.org>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     I am new to F# - is there a good tutorial and/or good usecase of
>     when I would want to use F#?  It looks like it is built on top of
>     Microsoft's .NET CLR - is that a good thing?
>
>
> I'll try to answer objectively. I've never written F# personally. I've
> written a lot of CLR code in C# and powershell, and when forced at
> gunpoint VB.NET <http://VB.NET>. I don't have a suggestion for a
> tutorial. As far as when you want to use it, its an extension of OCAML,
> and there is an option to compile pure OCAML code. Its a really
> good language for implementing algotithims. Its not good for "plumbing
> code." So as an example, if you were writing a daytrading system in the
> CLR, you code to talk to the bloomberg terminal, and talk to the system
> that executes the trade should be in C#. The code that's taking your
> data from your bloomberg terminal and doing all kinds of crazy math to
> determine when and what to buy and sell should be in F#.

ah ok thanks Justin!  We've been adopting "R" in my domain over here - 
so it sounds like F# may fit a similar role as that.  Got it.

>
> F# is apache licensed[1] and bundled in mono. I've never seen an
> instance of Microsoft harming an open source .NET project via copyright
> or patent claims. Miguel, the head of mono has a commercial  business
> that produces Visual Studio plugins to let you develope in the CLR and
> deploy on android and iphone[2]. Microsoft hosted the 2010 monospace
> conference in the NERD center in MIT (where I happened to speak about
> Mongodb). So in a very pragmatic sense, as a person who produces and
> consumes lots of open source code that compiles to the CLR, Its not a
> bad thing IMHO.

I agree with you this.  I've been following mono for ages now ever since 
I was at a gnome dev conference and miguel announced and gave a pretty 
exciting live tutorial on mono.

sometimes i feel that is the R&D guys and most of the engineering talent 
at microsoft were able break free from the business constraints of 
trying to maintain various monopolies we'd be seeing some *really* 
interesting cross platform code out there.  but then my company decides 
to force everyone to use the office365 cloud products and i turn back to 
my normal hater self :)


thanks again for your perspective on this - i feel like it's always good 
to keep a well stocked toolbox of computer languages handy, kinda like 
my liquor cabinet...

cheers,
-pete


-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
twitter => @nomadlogicLA