Double Trouble with Paulmichael Blasucci and Steve Goguen

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Due to hurricane damage Microsoft's offices were closed on the 30th. We've now moved the meeting to September 6th.

At the next meeting we'll have the pleasure of seeing two of our most knowledgeable group members speak back to back!

Speaker: Paulmichael Blasucci

Topic: An F# case study: fs-zmq

This case study will cover:

• Traditional OOP for resource management
• P/Invoke for native interoperability (plus structs for complex marshaling)
• Extension methods, custom compiled names for managed interoperability
• REPL for interactive testing and developmentfunction composition, custom operators for simplified development "in-the-small"
• Unions and ActivePatterns for more sophisticated domain modeling
• Project structure helps document type hierarchyhigher-order functions allow re-use of common patterns (fs-zmq devices)

Paulmichael Blasucci has been using F# for years and brings a lot to the table with that experience. His experience tells him that F# is the most productive, pragmatic language on the .NET platform and he wishes to share that experience with you.

Speaker: Steve Goguen

Topic: Design Patterns In F#

Since it was first published in 1994, Design Patterns and the Gang of Four (GoF) have influenced hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of software developers around the world and giving us a vocabulary to describe common solutions to common problems. While Design Patterns has been hailed by some, it's also been heavily criticized by others. Some critics describe Design Patterns as a prescription of complex solutions to simple problems, while others point out how their favorite language makes certain patterns irrelevant. In this presentation, we'll explore how F# changes how we look at some of these patterns from its hybrid functional/object-oriented point of view.

Steve has been developing software since 1995 where he landed his first job creating Total Quality Management software with Visual C++. For years he attempted to achieve component code reuse with crude tools like COM and ATL but instead lost many battles to the complexity demons. He's currently retraining and rearming himself with mathematically sound abstractions and F#.