F# - Hmmmm.....

I was reading recent blog by Don Syme who is a principal researcher at Microsoft research. He is also the inventor of the new programming language called the F#. Initially I was like "oh my god, another language by Microsoft. They just can't have enough of them." I was curious to look into this language and see how different it is from others.

This langauge is already quite used by the .Net community but still new and different. The reason I am writing about this langauge because this claims to make asynchronous programming easier.

Now the reason it is called F # ( F sharp ) is Microsoft claims it to be FUN language or a very Functional language to work with. In lay man terms it is language which helps you execute complex programs using very simple code. This langauge is meant for the .Net framework.

“Functional programming offers important new ways to think about problem solving. The F# Interactive lets developers work interactively with data and application-programming interfaces [APIs] in a lightweight, explorative environment. F# also provides a set of core features for making parallel and asynchronous programming easier.”

It took them almost five years to develop this language. It can work on varied platforms like Linux, MAC including Windows. It has a great tool bag which provides you with various functions making it user friendly.

The Visual Studio release includes important new features of F#:

• A simple, succinct functional syntax.


• A rich .NET object-oriented programming model.


• Integrated parallel and asynchronous programming features.


• Units of measure.


• F# Interactive.

Microsoft do not claim it to be replacing C# at all. The interesting fact about F# is that you can use its functions in already existing C# and visual basic projects. Well I am definitely excited to try this new language and see how can I do asynchronous programming with it although it could be used for various purposes from scientific analysis to Game develpoment and much more.

If you want more info check out this article - Click

The Translating! Telephone

There is this new technology has been introduced at the Tech Fest 2010.

Its called the Translating Telephone. As the name suggests it translates voice chat of one language to another. This is introduced by Microsoft Research.

As per the demo, I am really impressed by the technology behind it. It not only translates the voice into other language in a text format but also the voice format. This concept is quite old but by looking at the demo, I think that it would come out to be useful for people doing international business.

The really cool thing is that this system will translate it into a commonly spoken language with use of slang words. I could tell you from my own experience that people from different countries may have a hard time understanding the slang words from a particular country. While I was new to Michigan it was really hard for me to understand certain words I came across because we have our own set English slang words. The funny thing was some professors used slang too which were confusing to me. But anyway I hope this technology really prove to be as workable as it promises to be.