Hi Joe,

I'm interested in learning another language, looking for something functionnal.

I was starting with scheme because I had seen it during my degree and the programming languages and compilers course & teacher were admitedly inspiring. But I think the syntax is retarded and I like the idea of static typing and type inference.

So now I'm looking at other directions like Haskell.

I don't know how much work it represents for you to add another language to LINQpad and I was wondering what the odds were of seeing F# added to it.

Also, I read a few things about how F# natively does part of what LINQ can do and/or mixing both together and that we might see some interesting stuff when VS2010 comes out, what are your thoughts on that?

Finally, my employer had the generosity of offering us private two-days design patterns course. I must confess finding it quite hard... thanks to your book, I think I'm good with C# but am starting to think I'm horrible in Object Oriented programming. Should I look at some Object Oriented books or get that C# 3.0 Design Patterns from O'Reilly and just work on it? Are there any good example of Design Patterns that you used in LINQpad, perhaps I should use those as examples.

Thanks,

David

If you're using C#, Design Patterns are definitely worth studying.

I learned from the famous Gang of Four book. The Head-First book is also quite popular too, and I think there's also a book aimed at C#. Check out the reviews on amazon.com.

Some of the patterns are quite intuitive and if you've been programming for a while, you might be using them without even realizing it. Some patterns, though, are counterintuitive and you might never think otherwise to apply them. An example is Visitor.

Functional languages like Haskell of F# will help you think laterally - and will help you use LINQ to its maximum potential, too. LINQ very much follows the functional paradaigm. If you're using LINQ a lot in your programming, you'll also find it easy to parallelize computationally intensive code using PLINQ when Framework 4.0 is released next year.

Regards

Joe