The F# Computation Expression Zoo (PADL'14)

F# computation expressions are the syntactic language mechanism that is used by features like sequence expressions and asynchronous workflows. The aim of F# computation expressions is to provide a single syntactic mechanism that provides convenient notation for writing a wide range of computations.

The syntactic mechanisms that are unified by computation expressions include Haskell do notation and list comprehensions, C# iterators, asynchronous methods and LINQ queries, Scala for comprehensions and Python generators to name just a few.

Some time ago, I started working on an academic article to explain what makes computation expressions unique - and I think there is quite a few interesting aspects. Sadly, this is often not very well explained and so the general preception is more like this...

Published: Friday, 8 November 2013, 6:42 AM
Tags: haskell, research, f#, functional programming
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It has been some time since I last wrote about F# Deep Dives, so I'd like to write a quick update. In summary, having 10 authors does not mean that the book will be finished in 1/10 of the time, but now that the holidays are almost over, you can expect more frequent updates again!

Find older blog articles here

Trainings, writing & consluting

I'm a frequent speaker at F# and .NET events, founding member of the F# Foundation author of C# and F# book, numerous articles and a StackOverflow addict. I have been Microsoft C# MVP since 2004 and I used F# since early Microsoft Research versions.

Have you seen the F# testimonials and are you thinking about learning and using F# of functional techniques?

• F# books. I wrote Real World Functional Prog­ramming that explains functional concepts using C# and F# and I'm working on F# Deep Dives.
• Public courses. Together with Phil Trelford, we run regular public F# courses in New York and London. For more, see Fast Track to F# at SkillsMatter.
• Consulting and trainings. I also provide private F# trainings and consluting through my company Dual Notion ltd. If you are interested email me!

Research & teaching

I'm interested in a wide range of topics in programming languages, ranging from category theory, comonads, reactive and distributed programming to scientific computing and working with data.

I like working on topics inspired by practical problems. I created a web framework for F# that inspired commercial projects like WebSharper and my experimental F# extensions can be tested live on tryjoinads.org.

• Coeffects: Unified static analysis of context-dependence (PDF) is our recent paper (published at ICALP 2013) that discusses the theory of context-dependent computations in details.
• Academic web page has links to other published papers, work-in-progress drafts, research talks and also information about projects and courses that I supervised.