In F#, you have the choice of using a struct or a record as a lightweight container for data. The similarities between the two are striking – both are immutable by default, neither can be inherited, and they both offer structural equality semantics by default too! However, there’s a key difference between them, their performance [...]

In my previous post on discriminated unions, I presented discriminated unions as an alternative to standard .Net classes to represent hierarchical data structures. However, in terms of data structure, discriminated unions share much more similarities with enums than they do classes – both allow you to define a set of named constants and associate some [...]

Today's the day to say it loud and clear: I'm an Apple II kid.... I grew up in Toowoomba, Australia, and had the good fortune to go to a (then somewhat radical) primary school which had an Apple II+ for use in Year 6 and 7. I guess it was 1979-1982. My brother had already taught me the joys of a programmable HP calculator, and my Dad had taught us the joys of 8'' floppy disks and programming Mastermind games on his (Digital?) machine at work. At primary school we got to set our own timetables, and I includ[...]