F#

This language is a whole other world.

I bought a book on it (expert F#), and I will shortly buy another book on it (Foundations of F#).

After LISP, I didn't know if I could ever really be with another language, really. You see, I saw so much promise and possibilities in LISP.

The look of the code was amazing. The smooth and perfectly elegant lines of code, mixed with the intricate and somewhat arcane lines of meta-code. It still gives me chills to just think about it.

The infinite possibilities of a programmable programming language. Who wouldn't fall in love with LISP? Surely, I cannot blame myself for such fantasy.

Over time, our relationship soured. I yanked and urged common lisp to move into somewhat common territory (with a name like that, you would think it would be easy...). I kept thinking that I could somehow change it, to make the infinite possibilities I saw with it really happen.

The final straw was moving it to the .net platform. This is a necessary move, it would have been good for both of us. The next step.

There comes a point in every relationship where you must either move forward or move away. And as of late, I must admit that my thoughts have been absent and my intentions toward another have grown stronger.

I didn't even know who that other was.

Then one glorious day when I felt the need to express some of the joy that life had brought me, I caught the look of something I had seen from afar but never considered.

F# and I are curiously staring at each other over coffee at the moment. It appears that we really don't speak the same language; although when push comes to gentle, rhythmic shoving I am sure we will figure it out. We are so very viscerally attracted to each other that maybe we just have to get over our differences one way or another.

This will be a sweet and gentle love affair at first. I need to give myself time to adjust to new concepts, to the gloriously dirty feel of doing something very familiar with a very unfamiliar body.

Perhaps F# can help teach my wounded heart to love again...

Chris