14 DAY TRIAL // The evolution of F# will be intimately connected with the development process of Visual Studio 2010. Currently available as the September 2008 Community Technology Preview, Microsoft's investments in the .NET scripting language will gear toward the integration with its next generation of development tools. The Redmond giant indicated that it planned to move forward with F# from the CTP, concomitantly with the availability of the first fully-fledged release of Visual Studio 2010. However, the software giant failed to deliver any indication as to when it intended to deliver Visual Studio 2010 Beta.
“F# will ship as part of Visual Studio 2010! Since the September 2008 CTP of F#, the F# team has been working hard on integrating F# into the main development branch of Visual Studio 2010,” Don Syme, Microsoft senior researcher, revealed.
“Our next major release of F# will be as part of the first beta of Visual Studio 2010, and at around the same time we will make available a matching update release of the Visual Studio 2008/.NET2.0 F# compiler and tools.”
Essentially, F# is a programing language designed for the .NET Framework by Microsoft Research. However, despite the integration into Visual Studio 2010, it will not ship in the .NET Framework itself, and this also includes .NET Framework 4.0. Microsoft is looking to offer developers an F# redistributable package, which will bring to the table the F# core libraries and compiler as an additional component.
“F# is a joint advanced development project between Microsoft Research, Cambridge, and the Microsoft Developer Division. I am very glad to be staying involved as the language architect and will remain at Microsoft Research. Our awesome team includes people in Cambridge, Redmond, Vancouver, and China, and some team members operate from Germany and New York. I am continually amazed at the people I get to work with on this project and the skills they bring, and we hope to make it a prime example of innovative development at Microsoft,” Syme added.
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP is available for download here.