hubFS: THE place for F#

Howdy F# community :)

This is my first post, I'll share a little background about me: I am researching some experimental financial and statistical analysis algorithms. Although I like to use C# as my default language for most programs, I've considered a functional language would be better suited for the job. I've read a lot of good things about F#, and I decided to use F# in place of C# for heavy number crunching and list processing.

I don't own the full versions of Visual Studio, only the express versions. I've read a lot of documentation on getting F# to work with Visual Studio .Net, but next to nothing on getting it to work with with express editions of Visual Studio.

So, I have two questions:

1) Is there any painless way I can integrate F# into the C# Express IDE?

2) Does F# have rapid-application-development support? (i.e. visually designing forms with drag/drop controls, interactive debugging, etc.)

Hi Yahweh,

F# 1.9 supports interactive debugging, intellisense, on-the-fly typechecking and a (slightly imperfect) project system. Interactive typechecking is especially important in a type-inferred language, and I always recommend people use F# with Visual Studio or else start a community project to connect the F# interactive type checking API to their editor.

The F# Visual Studio extensions won't work with the Express editions, with the exception of debugging. That's a constraint placed by the Express editions themselves, which don't accept plug-ins.

There are 180-day trial editions of the full Visual Studio 2005 versions available from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/bb188238.aspx. That's the recommended way of getting going with F#.

I'm told by reliable sources that F# installs correctly into the SQL Server Develoer Edition, which is only $49.95, see http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.aspx?view=22&pcid=f544888c-2638-48ed-9f0f-d814e8b93ca0&type=ovr.

Kind regards

don

Hi Yahweh,

Or you can download and use Visual Studio 2008 beta 2. F# plugin works the same without any effort. Thanks to F# team for making it available.

Regards,

Can.