Microsoft Small Basic is a minimal implementation of the BASIC programming language aimed at beginners. In my last article I described the implementation of an interpreter for Small Basic using an internal DSL to specify the abstract syntax tree (AST) for programs. With the AST for the language well defined, a text parser for Small Basic programs is now relatively easy. There are quite a few options for writing parsers in F# from FsxLex and FSYyacc to hand rolled recursive descent parsers and parser combi[...]

Microsoft’s Small Basic is a minimal implementation of the BASIC programming language using only 14 keywords. It’s aimed at beginners with a very simple development environment and library. My kids have enjoyed playing with it particularly the Turtle API which are reminiscent of Logo. Small Basic programs can be run locally, online via Silverlight or migrated to full fat Visual Basic .Net. I’m quite interested in building Domain Specific Languages (DSLs), including embedded DSLs, parsers and compilers. Fo[...]

Last week I travelled to Malmö in Sweden for Øredev, a large well established annual conference primarily covering enterprise development practices from programming to agile. The first night at the event was probably the most surreal I’ve experienced at a developer conference. It began with a keynote from XKCD creator Randall Munroe covering their increasingly elaborate April fools’ day pranks and turning his lounge into a ball pit. Then, along with Rachel Reese, Julie Lerman, Iris Classon and some e[...]

Last week’s Progressive F# tutorials conference seems to have struck a note: Progressive F# 2013 best conference ever. Fact. #progfsharp A big thanks to Skills Matter for organizing this 2-day hands on community event: You can see pictures from the event on Skills Matter’s Facebook photo stream:   Following on from events in 2011 and 2012 this year we welcomed 79 F#ers: #progFsharp seems to grow in size every year :) If you’d lik[...]

.Net was Microsoft’s answer to Java. Java promised a single language that could target multiple platforms. .Net offered multiple languages that targeted Windows. Back then that meant C#, VB.Net and C++/CLI, Virtual Machines Things have moved on for both VMs, the JVM now has a plethora of languages like Groovy, Clojure and Scala. Meanwhile .Net code has become cross platform via Mono, in fact C# and F# now have arguably offer a better story for iOS than Java. For iOS, Xamarin compiles C# and F# code to n[...]