F# in Education Workshop

F# is simple, type safe, and efficient functional programming language with special expressiveness in parallel programming, scripting, and algorithmic development. F# combines the advantages of typed functional programming with a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system and the .NET library and tools base. F# is freely available for .NET and Mono development across Windows, Mac, and Linux, and has a very successful professional implementation in Visual Studio 2010. To support teaching of F#, Microsoft Research is working in conjunction with the F# community to ensure a consistent learning experience across all three platforms.

This workshop discussed the projects underway for F# courseware, implementations, and compiler open-sourcing. The workshop welcomed participation from all academics interested in F# as a possible teaching language, as well as from those in industry wanting to know what it can offer for them. The program offered a variety of talks covering all areas of use and implementation of the language.

F# originates from Microsoft Research Lab – Cambridge and the Microsoft Research F# team, led by Don Syme, in partnership with the Microsoft Developer Division. The workshop was organized by the Computer Science theme at Microsoft Research Lab – Redmond, led by Judith Bishop.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

19:00
Dinner at the Liberty Hotel

Friday, November 5, 2010

New England Research & Development (NERD) Center

08:00
Registration and full breakfast

09:00 – Keynote
Don Syme, Microsoft Research, Cambridge
F#: Succinct, Modern Functional Programming

10:30
Break

Implementations

11:00
Tomas Petricek, Charles University, Prague
Going cross-platform with F# MonoDevelop plugin

11:30
Joe Pamer, F# Core Team, Microsoft
F# from the Mac User’s Perspective

12:00
Dean Guo, Microsoft External Research
TryFSharp in a Browser

12:30
Lunch

Education

13:30
Rick Minerich, Microsoft MVP (F#) and Leader of the New England F# User’s Group
F# in the classroom and the lab

14:00
Peter Sestoft, IT University of Copenhagen
Programming Language Concepts using F# as a Meta-language

14:30 – Panel session
•Judith Bishop, Microsoft Research (Chair)
•Nigel Horspool, University of Victoria
•David Walker, Princeton University
•Susan Eisenbach, Imperial College, London
Why Teach F#

15:30
Break

The Future

15:45
Don Syme, Microsoft Research, Cambridge
Looking Ahead with F#: Taming the Data Deluge

17:00
Howard Mansell, CreditSuisse, New York
Locknote: F# – An Education

17:50
Judith Bishop, Microsoft Research
Closing remarks

18:00
End

19:00
Workshop dinner at the Liberty Hotel

Saturday, November 6, 2010

09:00–12:30
Project meeting by invitation

Education in F#

Implementations of F#

The Future of F#

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