function tweet(name) { var text = '@fsibot let n=hash"'+name+'"in"\\n"+String.concat"\\n"[for y in 0..4->System.String[|for x in[0;5;10;5;0]->"─█".[(n>>>x+y)&&&1]|]]', windowOptions = 'scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=yes', width = 550, height = 420, winHeight = screen.height, winWidth = screen.width; var left = Math.round((winWidth / 2) - (width / 2)); var top = 0; if (winHeight > height) { top = Math.round((winHeight / 2) - (height / 2)); }[...]

Following on from yesterday’s post on Disinherited Types where I implement an F# type provider that hides inherited members of a type to let you focus on the useful members. The example was the WPF Button control which contains around 300 members via 9 levels of inheritance and appears to flout the object-oriented principle of composition over inheritance. Microsoft’s MSDN documentation takes another approach to the problem of making relevant members discoverable by grouping members by type, i.e. all prope[...]

One of the things that’s always bugged me when using Windows UI libraries like WinForms and WPF is the sheer number of members that pop up in intellisense for a control. The Button type in WPF has around 300 members and a total of 9 levels of inheritance making it hard to find the useful members. Or to put it another way the inherited members occlude the useful members: The picture above shows what you actually see in the code completion box in the editor, however for a button you’re probably more interes[...]

Welcome to the 2015 F# Advent Calendar and one of 2 posts for December 3rd. For last year’s advent calendar I tried to follow the seasonal theme and produced an article on generating snowflakes. This year I thought I’d be more literal and look at producing calendar types using F#’s Type Provider mechanism resurrecting a project from 2014, FSharp.Date. FSharp.Date FSharp.Date is a simple F# Type Provider, inspired by VB.Net’s date literal feature,that lets you define dates and time values in F# by pressing [...]

Next week I’ll be heading over to the US for some tourism with a little speaking along the way: Sat 17th Oct – F# Gotham event (NYC) Sunday night flight to Seattle Mon 19th Oct – F# Seattle User Group Tuesday morning train to Portland Tue 20th Oct – Portland F# Meetup  Thursday afternoon flight to San Fran Thu 22nd Oct  - San Francisco F# Meetup Friday afternoon flight to LA! Hope to see some of you on the way, and a big thanks to Rachel Reese and Jet.com for inviting me across the pond! :) P.S. To se[...]