I’m really excited to take part in this year’s FsAdvent. Thank you, Sergey, for all of the work you do with this and F# Weekly.

Three disclaimers:

  1. I’m not a creative person, especially when it comes to naming things, so I’m stealing Stephen Diehl’s title for this post.
  2. Although I work for Microsoft, I’m not writing this post on Microsoft’s behalf. All views things expressed here are my own views.
  3. This is a long post split into three sections. I don’t have a TL;DR.

2017 has been a very exciting year for F#.

To begin, F# has grown to be bigger than ever, at least as far as we can measure, through product telemetry, twitter activity, GitHub activity, and F# Software Foundation activity.

Telemetry is a complicated topic, and we do not try to account for existing users who are using F# in environments without telemetry, so it’s never perfect. Actual usage of F# in the world is strictly higher than what we can measure.

But numbers and metrics are limited, because they tell only a small part of the story. I’ll attempt to summarize some of the major things that happened for F# this year.

Wew, that’s a lot. I probably missed some things that matter to people, so please let me know if you feel I should list something.

If there’s a single thing I feel most when looking at the above list, it’s pride. Not just in myself or my immediate colleagues, but in the members of the F# community who have done so many incredible things across such a wide spectrum of the entire F# ecosystem. Every single person involved in the above items should feel proud of themselves and their accomplishments. I’m American, and thus prone to superlatives, but you are all rock stars and I’m humbled to work with you all.

I’d also like to mention a few of the things that matter to me on a more personal level:

I think it’s rare to find a job in my field that is this rewarding. There is a lot of stress involved, and the problems that need solving and issues that need addressing are never simple. But it’s worth it every time.

And now, for something entirely different.

I don’t think I’ve ever clarified, for anyone in the F# community, what my precise role is at Microsoft. My title is currently “Program Manager II”, but that doesn’t really mean much. I’ll start with a list of things I’m not:

Every action I take is to make sure that F# is a pleasure to work with and moving in the correct strategic direction so it will grow and flourish for years to come. That means a few things:

Finally, I am ultimately on the hook for the success of F#, Visual Studio users who use F#, Visual Studio for Mac users who use F#, Visual Studio Code and Ionide users who use F#, and Azure users who use F#. Although much of what I just listed are not my direct responsibility, my review at the end of the year depends on my involvement beyond the Visual F# tools which ship as a part of Visual Studio.

This point is key: my role eclipses just the Visual F# tools which ship in Visual Studio. F# is so much more than just the assets Microsoft delivers in Visual Studio, and limiting my actions to just those would do a disservice to F# users. The holistic picture of the entire “F# experience” is what I care about and try to improve.

And now, for something entirely different.

I’m very excited about what 2018 will bring for F#. So many things in the F# ecosystem that were in flux in 2017 have calmed down and have been set up for success. These are some of my assorted thoughts on the coming year:

I’ll also share some of the things that I personally want to focus on in terms of what my team delivers:

I view the above as a fairly realistic set of things that you’ll all enjoy over the coming year. I’m quite hopeful that every one of these things will be something to brag about by next Christmas.

2018 is going to be an incredible year for F#. Until then!