I'm extremely pleased to be attending this year's F# Exchange (6-7 April 2017) The program is very nearly finalized and the content looks amazing. In fact, this is shaping up to be one of those rare conferences where, no matter which sessions I choose to attend, I'm sure to be missing some fantastic presentations. Of course, it doesn't hurt that I'll get to catch up with friends both old and new. I'm also looking forward to finally meeting some "online friends" in real life. But I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of the topics on which I'll be presenting...
Many people will tell you how cool the F# language is (and rightfully so). But it obviously takes more than just coolness to build great software. It takes high-quality tools. So, in April, I'll be talking about two such tools:
Though really, these libraries are just "F# friendly" ways of plugging into broader concepts (property-based testing and ZMTP-based distributed systems, respectively).
Test What Now?
Fans of property-based testing (sometimes called random testing) will tell you how it lets you ensure your code "upholds invariants" (in the mathematical sense). That's great. Really. And I'll certainly be demonstrating some of that. But I really hope attendees will learn how to adopt a metrics-focused view of testing. We'll also be looking how random data-generation can help you better understand a problem domain. Taken together, this provides a more robust foundation for quality assurance.
Connect All the Things!
We live in a connected world. ZMTP provides a simple, robust means of developing software in such a world. And while I could spend hours exploring the nuances of this topic, Skill Matter's only given me 45 minutes. But that should be plenty of time to demonstrate the power and the potential of using ZeroMQ to build distributed systems. The concepts and patterns we'll cover are the building blocks for all manner of solutions, from micro services to time-series databases to peer-mesh file sharing.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, you'll be at Skill Matter's F# Exchange 2017. It's going to be a really incredible couple of days. If you do attend, please don't hesitate to say hello. I can hardly wait to hear your thoughts on anything (and everything) F#.