https://thesharperdev.com/ Recent content in Welcome to TheSharperDev on thesharperdev.com Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 22 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/giraffe-web-app-template/ Thu, 22 May 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/giraffe-web-app-template/ A template to help you get started with a F# web app https://thesharperdev.com/posts/using-fsharp-compiler-service/ Tue, 11 Mar 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/using-fsharp-compiler-service/ Details on how to integrate with the FSharp.Compiler.Service https://thesharperdev.com/posts/brief-overview-of-webassembly/ Tue, 11 Feb 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/brief-overview-of-webassembly/ How to get started with web assembly in F# https://thesharperdev.com/posts/brief-overview-of-webassembly/ Fri, 31 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/brief-overview-of-webassembly/ A gentle introduction to web assembly https://thesharperdev.com/posts/how-to-turn-off-framework-tests-in-ci-action/ Thu, 23 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/how-to-turn-off-framework-tests-in-ci-action/ https://thesharperdev.com/posts/how-different-csharp-data-structures-serialize-json/ Sat, 11 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/how-different-csharp-data-structures-serialize-json/ https://thesharperdev.com/posts/create-populate-objects-via-reflection-in-csharp/ Fri, 10 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/create-populate-objects-via-reflection-in-csharp/ Some strategies for building objects via reflection. https://thesharperdev.com/posts/ferris-json-nuget-package/ Sat, 04 Jan 2025 05:00:00 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/ferris-json-nuget-package/ My latest project is a new nuget library to support json serialization/deserialization. https://thesharperdev.com/posts/deploy-giraffe-app-fly-io/ Wed, 16 Feb 2022 05:24:33 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/deploy-giraffe-app-fly-io/ The steps needed to deploy a giraffe application to fly.io https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-play-audio/ Sat, 29 Jan 2022 18:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-play-audio/ Demonstrating how to play an audio clip in Fable https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-settimeout/ Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-settimeout/ Demonstrating how to call setTimeout in Fable https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-keyup-event-listener/ Mon, 17 Jan 2022 16:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-fable-keyup-event-listener/ Demonstrating how to create a keyup event listener in Fable https://thesharperdev.com/posts/intro-fsharp-functions/ Fri, 15 Oct 2021 05:24:33 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/intro-fsharp-functions/ How do you define a F# function? What's the difference between a method and a function? Lets find out. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-choose/ Thu, 14 Oct 2021 05:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-choose/ Seq.choose filters and unwraps Option types https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-cast/ Wed, 13 Oct 2021 04:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-cast/ Seq.cast helps supports automatic type conversions for loosely-typed collections. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-cache/ Tue, 12 Oct 2021 04:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-cache/ Seq.cache helps improve performance by avoiding regeneration for costly sequences. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-averageby/ Mon, 11 Oct 2021 12:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-averageby/ Seq.averageBy extracts a value from a complex object to perform an average. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-average/ Sun, 10 Oct 2021 12:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-average/ Seq.average computes the average of anything in the sequence. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-append/ Sat, 09 Oct 2021 12:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-append/ Seq.append concats two sequences together. https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-allpairs/ Fri, 08 Oct 2021 16:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/snippets/fsharp-seq-allpairs/ Seq.allPairs pairs elements from each sequence to create a new sequence. https://thesharperdev.com/posts/fsharp-memoization/ Fri, 08 Oct 2021 06:29:54 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/fsharp-memoization/ Sometimes functions are asked recompute the same value over and over again. Why do all that extra work? Memoization is h... https://thesharperdev.com/posts/fsharp-fibonacci-five-ways/ Thu, 30 Sep 2021 16:14:34 -0500 https://thesharperdev.com/posts/fsharp-fibonacci-five-ways/ Recrusion is cool! And Fibonacci is a standard algorithm to examine when exploring recursion. Here are five ways to gene... https://thesharperdev.com/supervised-v-unsupervised-v-reinforcement-learning-an-introduction/ Mon, 18 May 2020 00:27:47 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/supervised-v-unsupervised-v-reinforcement-learning-an-introduction/ Machine Learning has changed our world. It will continue to change our world. Lets walk through and talk about the 3 main categories of the Machine Learning fields. https://thesharperdev.com/optimizing-our-perfect-tic-tac-toe-bot/ Sun, 10 May 2020 18:20:36 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/optimizing-our-perfect-tic-tac-toe-bot/ Searching everything is slow. Luckily there are a number of optimizations we can apply in order to speed up our searching. In this article we'll look into alpha-beta pruning and significantly speed up our Tic-Tac-Toe bot! https://thesharperdev.com/coding-the-perfect-tic-tac-toe-bot/ Sun, 03 May 2020 19:11:33 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/coding-the-perfect-tic-tac-toe-bot/ Tic-Tac-Toe is a simple game to demonstrate the power of searching. By the end of this article we'll create a python bot that will never lose a game of Tic-Tac-Toe! https://thesharperdev.com/implementing-minimax-tree-search/ Sun, 26 Apr 2020 00:30:12 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/implementing-minimax-tree-search/ Games allow for easy testing of a program's intelligence. Lets implement a simple search algorithm to create a tic-tac-toe bot that never loses. Tic-tac-toe is a simple game, but MiniMax is an affect way to cut down search trees in a variety of situations. https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-machine-learning-using-keras/ Sat, 18 Apr 2020 19:31:00 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-machine-learning-using-keras/ Keras is one of the go to choices for Machine Learning in Python, especially Deep Machine Learning. Lets write our first application in Keras to demonstrate how easy and how useful this library is. https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network-part-3/ Sun, 12 Apr 2020 18:55:51 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network-part-3/ Lets solve an actual problem with your neural network. It will learn to recognize handwritten digits. It's a class intro to Machine Learning. But always useful to help understand what's really going on with Machine Learning and how it works. https://thesharperdev.com/useful-numpy-operations-for-machine-learning/ Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:45:04 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/useful-numpy-operations-for-machine-learning/ Python is the best way to learn Machine Learning. NumPy is one of the most useful libaries in Python. Lets take a look at NumPy and how understanding it can help us in our understanding of Machine Learning. https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network-part-2/ Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:39:27 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network-part-2/ Lets continue building on our first neural network. We'll introduce more of the math behind a neural network and demonstrate what makes a neural network learn. https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network/ Tue, 24 Mar 2020 01:11:41 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/build-your-first-neural-network/ Machine Learning is transforming our world. It's a topic that every programmer, every person, should be familiar with. Lets build our first neural network for a first hand experience with this technology. https://thesharperdev.com/hope-in-the-midst-of-a-virus/ Sun, 15 Mar 2020 19:03:27 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/hope-in-the-midst-of-a-virus/ Coronavirus has impacted our world. Shutdown, economic depressions, fear. Thankfully there's someone we can rely on that's bigger than any virus could ever be. https://thesharperdev.com/one-strategy-to-unit-test-giraffe-httphandlers-in-fsharp/ Sun, 08 Mar 2020 19:11:29 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/one-strategy-to-unit-test-giraffe-httphandlers-in-fsharp/ Giraffe is an F# ASP.NET Core web framework. It has quirks and patterns that I've never encountered before in C# or web programming. The HttpHandler is one of the patterns new to me. Lets take a look at one way to unit test these handlers to ensure our application is working as expected. https://thesharperdev.com/examples-using-httpclient-in-fsharp/ Sat, 29 Feb 2020 21:07:23 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/examples-using-httpclient-in-fsharp/ The HttpClient is the standard way to make web requests in .NET. Because F# is a functional language, it's usage is different than what you'd find in C#. Here are some examples of how to use the HttpClient in F#. https://thesharperdev.com/thoughts-on-how-i-embrace-and-deal-with-reality/ Sun, 23 Feb 2020 23:47:47 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/thoughts-on-how-i-embrace-and-deal-with-reality/ We all try to escape or avoid reality. But until we face it, we'll never grow. We not only need to face it, but embrace it. So many of our errors in life come from not properly understanding or avoiding reality. How can I get better at it? https://thesharperdev.com/fsharps-mailboxprocessor/ Sun, 16 Feb 2020 02:28:48 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/fsharps-mailboxprocessor/ State is the root of a lot of problems in a multi threaded environment. One of F# solves this problem is by it's MailboxProcessor. It's a technique that allows for communication in a way that avoids the inherent problems of storing and sharing state. https://thesharperdev.com/exploring-the-elmish-todo-app/ Mon, 10 Feb 2020 02:35:35 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/exploring-the-elmish-todo-app/ Elmish is a great UI building language. The todoapp is one of the best ways to see a UI language in action. Lets dive into the Elmish todo app and see what we can learn. https://thesharperdev.com/csharps-whenall-and-exception-handling/ Sun, 02 Feb 2020 20:36:45 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/csharps-whenall-and-exception-handling/ Async programming is awesome! It's fundamental to create scalable and performant web applications. One problem I've run into often is how to catch exceptions when using a Task.WhenAll(). Lets take a look at one approach that ensures individual exceptions are caught and then handled or logged. https://thesharperdev.com/ndepend/ Sun, 19 Jan 2020 20:02:52 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/ndepend/ I received a free 1-year license in exchange to use and review NDepend. Rest assured, these thoughts and opinions are my... https://thesharperdev.com/functional-fundamentals-recursion/ Sun, 19 Jan 2020 02:40:13 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/functional-fundamentals-recursion/ For loops are everywhere. Recursion is the functional way to iterate through a collection. There are pros and cons to using it over a for loop. Take a peak at what makes it useful and unique. https://thesharperdev.com/thoughts-on-becoming-more-open-minded/ Sun, 12 Jan 2020 03:57:08 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/thoughts-on-becoming-more-open-minded/ How I think directly impacts my day to day, obviously! Open mindedness is a better way of thinking, but it's not my default. Lets explore a bit about why it's so important and how I can become a more open thinker. https://thesharperdev.com/the-state-of-thesharperdev-2020/ Sun, 05 Jan 2020 21:03:04 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/the-state-of-thesharperdev-2020/ 2019 has been a great year. Lets recap a little of what's happened here on the blog and give some thoughts about what direction 2020 might have for us. https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-use-repl-and-scripting-in-fsharp/ Tue, 31 Dec 2019 20:49:00 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-use-repl-and-scripting-in-fsharp/ Scripts are great for prototyping! F# can be used as a scripting language. Lets set up a simple example and see how easy it is to script using F#. https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-benchmarkdotnet/ Sun, 29 Dec 2019 20:40:29 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-benchmarkdotnet/ Level up with the easiest way to measure the performance of your .NET Code. Stop wondering whether your code is slow, start testing to ensure the code you're shipping doesn't have any crippling speed or memory issues. BenchmarkDotNet is the go-to choice for anything performance related in the C#/.NET environment. https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-elmish/ Thu, 26 Dec 2019 03:08:18 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/getting-started-with-elmish/ UI work is the wild west! Often it's just iterate until it works. Elmish provides a better set of tools to ensure your UI is working as expected. Why is it so useful? How does it allow you to write UIs that can be checked to ensure they're working as expected? Lets write a simple Elmish app to demonstrate it's many advantages. https://thesharperdev.com/introduction-to-fsharp-type-providers/ Fri, 20 Dec 2019 04:23:08 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/introduction-to-fsharp-type-providers/ Types Provides allows compile time checks for your application. Is your SQL syntax right? Are you correctly using the columns from that csv file? It provides a higher level of correctness in your code by having the compiler check your work. Lets walkthrough on what it takes to get a SQL type provider running in F# to ensure your SQL usage is accurate. https://thesharperdev.com/the-cost-of-abstracting-a-list-in-csharp/ Sat, 14 Dec 2019 02:58:00 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/the-cost-of-abstracting-a-list-in-csharp/ There are a lot of ways to return a collection of things. List, IList, IEnumerable, ICollection. Which collection type gives the best performance? Which one should you be using in your code? We benchmark them all to figure out the tidbits of what the costs of each are. https://thesharperdev.com/the-difference-between-ienumerable-and-iqueryable-explained/ Tue, 03 Dec 2019 08:08:00 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/the-difference-between-ienumerable-and-iqueryable-explained/ IEnumerable and IQueryable show up everywhere in C#. Looking at the definitions and their usage, in one aspect they're pretty similar, but fundamentally they solve difference problems. Lets take a dive into both of these types and see what use case they're designed for. https://thesharperdev.com/functional-fundamentals-currying/ Sat, 30 Nov 2019 19:38:38 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/functional-fundamentals-currying/ Functional Programming has certain design principles that make it better suited for solving problems with code. Currying is one of those features. Coming from C#, it might not be something that's ever seen on your radar. Knowing it and using it will make your code more readable and more composable. https://thesharperdev.com/benchmarking-for-loop-variants/ Sat, 23 Nov 2019 03:16:34 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/benchmarking-for-loop-variants/ What type of for loop is the fastest? The regular for loop, the foreach loop? Using BenchmarkDotNet, we'll answer that question and give you the information you need to know when choosing the best for loop for your situation. https://thesharperdev.com/explaining-implicit-conversion-operators-in-c/ Sat, 16 Nov 2019 18:41:00 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/explaining-implicit-conversion-operators-in-c/ C# is a typed language, and generally requires explicit casting when moving between types. But one language feature, implicit conversion, allows you to implicitly move between types. It's a handy feature that probably shouldn't be overused. https://thesharperdev.com/under-the-hood-of-csharp-alias-types-and-namespaces/ Thu, 14 Nov 2019 02:41:25 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/under-the-hood-of-csharp-alias-types-and-namespaces/ Every C# developer uses the built in types; string, bool or int. But there also exists another set of types, String, Boolean and Int32. What's the difference? Which one should you use? Lets explore how C# namespaces resolve types and examine C#'s alias types. https://thesharperdev.com/explaining-async-programming-with-pizza/ Sat, 09 Nov 2019 19:34:50 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/explaining-async-programming-with-pizza/ Sometimes async programming can be confusing. Sometimes programming tutorials can be pretty confusing. Both can be simple when explained through a delicious medium that we all love and enjoy, Pizza! No more confusion, no more synchronous programming. https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-create-a-net-core-api-ci-action-using-github-actions/ Sat, 02 Nov 2019 19:26:59 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-create-a-net-core-api-ci-action-using-github-actions/ Github actions help you create easy and useful workflows. Want to build/test on every checking, PR that's opened, or code that's merged? Github actions have you covered. See what life can be like with some Github actions in your project. https://thesharperdev.com/ef-cores-addasync-v-add-method/ Sat, 26 Oct 2019 19:55:42 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/ef-cores-addasync-v-add-method/ Entity Framework is a useful and complex library. One aspect I've always been curious about is the AddAsync v. Add method. I finally put the time into researching what the difference is, why you'd use one or the other and some other EF tidbits. https://thesharperdev.com/add-swagger-to-a-net-core-3-0-api/ Sat, 19 Oct 2019 18:42:37 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/add-swagger-to-a-net-core-3-0-api/ Swagger is an awesome tool for using and testing APIs. Swagger integrates seamlessly with C# and will automatically generate an API interface for your API project. See how easy it is to plug into .NET Core API and start using. https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-write-a-brainfuck-interpreter-in-c/ Sat, 12 Oct 2019 10:58:48 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/how-to-write-a-brainfuck-interpreter-in-c/ Every programming language is compiled or interpreted to render an output. Learn the basics of how this process works by writing your own interpreter for the brainfuck langauge. A Turing complete language that is only useful for how-to articles like this one. https://thesharperdev.com/net-core-3-0-addcontrollers-method/ Sat, 05 Oct 2019 10:52:06 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/net-core-3-0-addcontrollers-method/ .NET Core has gone through a lot of transformation. Finally in it's 3.0 release, it finally adds a method that allows you to create an API without any View related code or logic. https://thesharperdev.com/c-design-patterns-the-visitor-pattern/ Sun, 29 Sep 2019 00:42:31 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/c-design-patterns-the-visitor-pattern/ The visitor pattern is commonly used with expression trees. It's designed to separate data from algorithm. This separation allows for interesting uses, we'll demonstrate how to print simple mathematical equations in different formats. https://thesharperdev.com/an-introduction-to-c-expression-trees/ Sun, 22 Sep 2019 19:19:27 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/an-introduction-to-c-expression-trees/ Entity Framework takes C# queries and turns them into SQL queries. Expression trees power that mapping and transformation. Expression trees are a nerdy language feature you may not know about, but they power a surprising amount of things in C#. https://thesharperdev.com/the-cost-of-synchronous-async-methods/ Sun, 15 Sep 2019 19:22:43 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/the-cost-of-synchronous-async-methods/ Async methods are one of the best tools to write performant and scalable web applications. But what is the cost of having async methods that don't actually have any asynchronous functionality? I'm sure you've written one before. Lets take a look at how it degrades the performance of the function. https://thesharperdev.com/pure-v-impure-functions/ Sun, 08 Sep 2019 18:59:40 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/pure-v-impure-functions/ Pure functions make your life and code better. Every function you write is either Pure or Impure. It's an important distinction that is never really taught in school or at most jobs. Learn about how writing pure functions can make your code easier to test and free from side effects. https://thesharperdev.com/about-me/ Sat, 31 Aug 2019 17:16:24 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/about-me/ Everyone has a story and mine is fairly simple. I'm a regular programmer who had an itch to start a blog. Now I've got one more thing to juggle on my plate. https://thesharperdev.com/hello-world/ Sat, 31 Aug 2019 11:05:47 +0000 https://thesharperdev.com/hello-world/ Everyone has a start. Welcome to the start of my blog, I'm looking forward to this adventure