Hi David, The one that’s always fascinated me is the disappearance of simulation languages.
In the 80’s I remember looking at Simula 68, and being amazed at what it offered. For something written in 68, having concepts like classes, and instances of classes, etc. was all pretty awesome. There were later versions of it as well. The idea was that if you wanted to model, say, people coming to a counter to be processed, you’d define classes for each actor involved. (They didn’t call them actors). Then, the bit that I thought was magic, is that wherever you had a decision to be made (i.e. mostly there just an IF type of statement) in the code in each actor’s class, you specified not only the logic for the IF, but the odds of going in either direction. Then you started it up, and just sat back and watched what happened. I thought that was gold, and certainly for someone doing that back in 68. And I think about how hard it would be for me to just build that today, using current tools. So I’ve always wondered why they disappeared. Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | About Greg: https://about.me/greg.low From: David Burstin <david.burs...@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, 29 June 2022 11:05 AM To: Dr Greg Low <g...@sqldownunder.com> Cc: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>; David Kean <david.k...@microsoft.com> Subject: Re: It's that time of year - F# Thanks all. Greg, unfortunately you are spot on. The more I use F#, the more I see my productivity and quality naturally increase on my home projects, especially once they start to get a bit complicated. I have always been firmly in the C# camp, but now that I have a good understanding of F# I really appreciate the constructs like active pattern matching, pipelining and partial application. The compiler really does catch nearly all errors and I haven't had to crack out the debugger for quite a while. If I had a choice, F# would definitely be my preferred choice. But, it is true that companies aren't using it. And understandably so - without a huge pool of developers the risks are enormous. It's a sad fact that for some languages "their fate does not always seem logical". Has anyone here tried F#? What were your experiences? If not, was it just because no one else is using it (totally valid)? Languages are like social media platforms - if no one is using it then no one wants to use it. Thanks for the responses. </rant> On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 at 09:33, Dr Greg Low <g...@sqldownunder.com<mailto:g...@sqldownunder.com>> wrote: It has to be a pretty “brave” or “interesting” choice for a dev team lead though doesn’t it ? (depending upon your perspective) Unless you’re doing something really, really out of the ordinary, choosing to use a language where there’s even a possibility of an actual list of companies who use it would seem awfully hard to justify. Given there are 4 listed in Australia, and on average pretty small, I wonder how many of those did so because they wanted to find a place to use it. I’m sure there will be more, but even so, that’s quite something. I certainly remember the hype when it appeared. Mind you, there have been many interesting languages over the years. And their fate has not always seemed logical. Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile SQL Down Under | Web: https://sqldownunder.com<https://sqldownunder.com/> | About Greg: https://about.me/greg.low From: David Kean via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Sent: Wednesday, 29 June 2022 9:06 AM To: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Cc: David Burstin <david.burs...@gmail.com<mailto:david.burs...@gmail.com>>; David Kean <david.k...@microsoft.com<mailto:david.k...@microsoft.com>> Subject: RE: It's that time of year - F# I asked Don and he pointed me to https://github.com/fsprojects/fsharp-companies, which lists a few. From: David Kean via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2022 8:11 AM To: David Burstin via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Cc: David Burstin <david.burs...@gmail.com<mailto:david.burs...@gmail.com>>; David Kean <david.k...@microsoft.com<mailto:david.k...@microsoft.com>> Subject: Re: It's that time of year - F# I'll ask around and get back to you. ________________________________ From: David Burstin via ozdotnet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Sent: Friday, June 24, 2022 3:40 PM To: ozDotNet <ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com<mailto:ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com>> Cc: David Burstin <david.burs...@gmail.com<mailto:david.burs...@gmail.com>> Subject: It's that time of year - F# Hi folks, It's been about a year since I asked, so here it is again. Does anyone know of any F# work being done in Melbourne, or anywhere in Australia? I've managed to do some small F# helper apps for my employer, but 98% of what I do is C#. I'd really love to find somewhere that uses F#. On the plus side - F# has helped improve my C# approach dramatically, and C# is constantly introducing more functional ideas (although discriminated unions and active patterns would be lovely). So, anyone know anything? Cheers David
