Our next meetup is an introduction to the F# language, covering:

• F# key types
  
• Immutability, and how it's an advantage
  
• Recursion in functional languages
  
• Units of measure in code, improving type information and static checks
  
• Parallelism, asynchronous patterns, and functional language performance
  

F# comes "in the box" with Visual Studio 2010, which means it's now very easy to get up & running. As a .NET language, it's very easy to integrate with C# or VB systems.

Our Speaker is Diego Colombo, and he has provided us with this bio:

I was born on the Tuscan island Elba, a long time ago. In 2002 I started collaborating with Microsoft Research Cambridge around software architecture for Robots, this lead to the MS funded R2D2 project and a lot of fun gadgets. I collaborated with the first release of MS Robotic Studio and XNA. During my PhD I moved my focus on code generation and metaprogramming to build video game engines. The last things I did before joining Infusion were related to project Natal. I still have a strong passion for coding with a very twisted use of code generation and generics.
While working at Microsoft Ireland I kept collaborating around robotics and video game related activities, alongside those I kept pushing for F# adoption! I am still collaborating with MS Ireland around the evangelisation of MS Robotic Studio, XNA and F#.

This promises to be a very interesting meetup - please spread the word if you know anyone that may be interested. If F# sounds like your thing, I'd also recommend meeting us at the "Reactive F#" meetup this wednesday at the London F# user group: http://www.meetup.com....