The Book of F#, Now Available

About a week ago two boxes arrived on my doorstep. Contained within were 20 copies of the Book of F#. Within a few days, I started seeing reports of additional people receiving their copies. At this point, I think it’s safe to announce that The Book of F# is finally available in both print and electronic forms!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

To celebrate its release, I’ll be giving away a few copies at each of the following events over the next several weeks. Be sure to check each event’s site for up-to-date logistics and registration information if you’d like to attend.

NUFW
19 March
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Indy Software Artisans
20 March
Carmel, Indiana

GR DevDay
22 March
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Nebraska Code Camp
28 March & 29 March
Lincoln, Nebraska

Indianapolis Mobile .NET Developers
Date To Be Announced
Fishers, IN

Of course, if you can’t attend any of these, don’t want to wait, or take your chances on getting a free copy, you can purchase the book from No Starch Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or O’Reilly. You can even find it on Safari Books Online.

Back to Basics: Streamlining the StringBuilder

To get back in the habit of blogging I thought I’d start by trying to breathe some new life into one of the oldest pieces of the .NET Framework – the StringBuilder. A few years ago I wrote about an aspect of the StringBuilder class that’s often overlooked – it’s fluent interface. Back then I speculated that one reason the fluent interface is so rarely used is that virtually every StringBuilder example, including those on MSDN, fail to highlight it by using a more imperative style. (more…)

The Book of F#: Early Access!

The Book of F#: Early AccessThe powers-that-be at No Starch Press decided to include The Book of F# in their Early Access program! Effective immediately, you can get PDF versions of the chapters as soon as they’re deemed print-ready.

By taking advantage of this program, you have the opportunity to provide some feedback and help craft the book into its final form. What’s more, is that by using the coupon code EARLYBIRD, you can save 30% off the final release price.

I’m really excited to see the book reach this milestone and am even more excited to see the final product in print in the coming months.

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. I’m disappointed that I posted only 18 articles this year – it’s almost like I’ve been busy with another project! With The Book of F# nearly complete, I hope to get back here a bit more often in 2014.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 49,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

.NET Users of Fort Wayne – March 19

To celebrate the release of my new book, The Book of F#, I’ll be back in Fort Wayne, IN to talk to NUFW on March 19. Instead of the usual technical talk, this will be an open-ended discussion of my experiences writing a technical book but I’m sure that F# will find its way into the conversation at least a few times.

If you’re in the Fort Wayne area and would like to join us, we’ll be meeting at the Cole Foundation Conference and Training Center (3213 Stellhorn Rd) at 6:00 PM. I’ll be giving out a few copies of the book as door prizes so you won’t want to miss this!

Fibonacci Sequence

As The Book of F# is nearing completion I’ve suddenly found myself with a bit of something people like to call spare time. This concept has been pretty foreign to me over the past nine months so as a way to fill that time I started looking at the Project Euler problems. I’m not far along yet (my math skills have gotten rusty over the years) but so far it has been a fun exercise.

Problem 2, involves calculating the sum of the even Fibonacci numbers less than 4,000,000. In the spirit of the project, I won’t divulge my entire solution (though it won’t be hard to fill in the gaps), but I thought the algorithm for generating Fibonacci numbers was interesting so I wanted to explore it a bit along with some interesting ways we can use it to create sequences in F#. (more…)

The Book of F#

The Book Of F#Earlier this year (late February to be exact) my life took an interesting turn: a publisher approached me about writing an F# book. Writing a book had been something that I’d thought of doing for some time but it was never something I gave any serious consideration. After some discussion with my wife, mostly about the time commitment, I decided to go ahead with the project. Since then, a mix of writing, reviewing, revising, and the variety of other activities that go along with getting a book on the shelves have consumed most of my nights and weekends.

After months of work, I’m very excited to announce that The Book of F#: Breaking Free with Managed Functional Programming will be published by No Starch Press! The book is scheduled for release on March 22, 2014 but No Starch is accepting pre-orders now! By pre-ordering from No Starch with the coupon code PREORDER, you can save 30% off the cover price of $44.95.

If you’re an experienced .NET developer that would like to break free from the chains of C# and Visual Basic or someone that’s just curious about the language, this book is for you. The Book of F# will introduce you to the basics of the language and walk you through features such as currying, partial application, pattern matching, discriminated unions, record types, units of measure, type providers, and a plethora of other concepts. Throughout the book you’ll see examples of how F#’s terse syntax and functional-first nature will help you be more productive and produce code that’s more predictable than that of many modern languages.

F# has been getting a lot of attention lately. If you’re even remotely curious as to why, I hope you’ll consider adding this book to your collection.

.NET Users of Fort Wayne – August 21

On August 21st I’ll once again venture out of my cave for a trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana where I’ll spread more F# love with my friends at NUFW.

If you’re in the Fort Wayne area and want to learn about how F# and functional programming principles can improve your software, please join us. The doors open at 6:00 for networking and the main event begins at 6:30. Be sure to check NUFW ‘s events page for the latest logistics information.

Microsoft MVP – Visual F#

If you’ve spoken with me or have been following this blog for any time you know that over the past year I’ve developed a bit of an obsession with the F# language. You’ve probably also noticed that fresh content here has been a bit, well, lacking over the past few months as I’ve focused on some speaking engagements and writing an as yet untitled F# book. I was very surprised, ok, shocked, when earlier this week I received word that I’ve been selected as a 2013 Microsoft MVP for Visual F#! I’m extremely honored to have received this recognition and will do everything I can to continue promote and advance this fantastic language.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the Indiana development community that I’ve been part of for so many years, particularly the user groups in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and Bloomington. Thank you for your all of your support and encouragement.

If you’re interested, you can find my MVP profile here: http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/mvp/David%20Fancher-5000148

On a related note, if you haven’t read about the new language features or tooling support in F# 3.1 and Visual Studio 2013, be sure to take a look at the F# Team blog.

Bloomington .NET Society – June 27

I know I’ve been quiet for a few months but don’t worry, I haven’t disappeared. Instead I’ve been hard at work on an upcoming F# book! The book has consumed most of my time but not being one to pass up a chance to talk about my obsession I’m making the trip down to Bloomington, IN at the end of the month to talk to the Bloomington .NET Society.

If you’re in the Bloomington area on June 27th and interested in learning about F#, please join us. You can find the full meeting details on the group’s site: http://dotnet.indiana.edu/news/jun-2013-meeting.

I hope to see you there!