F# Coding Breakfasts and Lunches: let's code together!

If you have ever come across my blog before, it will probably come as no surprise if I tell you that I enjoy coding with F# tremendously. However, there is another reason why I enjoy F#, and that is the Community aspect. One thing we have been trying to do in San Francisco is to build a group that is inclusive, and focused on learning together.

This is why we started the coding dojos a while back: one of our members mentioned that while he was convinced from talks that F# was a good language, presentations were not quite enough to help him get over the hump and feel comfortable coding, so we started sessions completely focused on writing code in groups to solve fun problems. This has been an amazingly fun experience.

fsibot, now 100% more Enterprise!

Let’s face it, @fsibot in its initial release came with a couple flaws undocumented features. One aspect that was particularly annoying was the mild Tourette’s syndrom that affected the bot; on a fairly regular basis, it would pick up the same message, and send the same answer over and over again to the brave soul that tried to engage in a constructive discussion.

Coding in the Age of Mobility: @fsibot 0.1 is out!

My recollection of how this all started is somewhat fuzzy at that point. I remember talking to @tomaspetricek about the recent “A pleasant round of golf” with @relentlessdev event in London. The idea of Code Golf is to write code that fits in as few characters as possible – a terrible idea in most cases, but an interesting one if you want to force your brain into unknown territory. Also, a very fun idea, with lots of possibilities. If I recall correctly, the discussion soon drifted to the conclusion that if you do it right (so to speak), your code should fit in a tweet. Tweet, or GTFO, as the kids would say (or so I hear).

Picasquez vs Velasso: Classics Mashup with F#

It is the summer, a time to cool off and enjoy vacations – so let’s keep it light, and hopefully fun, today! A couple of days ago, during his recent San Francisco visit, @tomaspetricek brought up an idea that I found intriguing. What if you had two images, and wanted to recreate an image similar to the first one, using only the pixels from the second?

To make this real, let’s take two images - a portrait by Velasquez, and one by Picasso, which I have conveniently cropped to be of identical size. What we are trying to do is to re-arrange the pixels from the Picasso painting, and recombine them to get something close to the Velasquez:

How F# cured my 2048 addiction

Like many a good man, I too got caught into the 2048 trap, which explains in part why I have been rather quiet on this blog lately (there are a couple other reasons, too).

In case you don’t know what 2048 is yet, first, consider yourself lucky - and, fair warning, you might want to back away now, while you still have a chance. 2048 is a very simple and fun game, and one of the greatest time sinks since Tetris. You can play it here, and the source code is here on GitHub.