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Mutable variables eliminated from .NET

Redmond, WA: At an unusual press conference held this Sunday morning, Bill Taylor, Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, announced that after much research into the causes of security holes and instabilities, Microsoft will eliminate mutable variables from the .NET platform and its languages, including C# and VB.NET. "One of our top researchers found that mutable variables were the major root cause preventing us from achieving the great user experience we always strive to deliver," said Taylor. "Once we realized that, eliminating them from .NET was a no-brainer."

Given that this announcement was made on a Sunday, reactions have been limited so far, but one prominent VB.NET developer commented that "Compared to the switch from VB6 to VB.NET, this ought to be a breeze." A C# developer was heard to say, "After anonymous delegates, monads shouldn't be a problem."

To ensure wide penetration of this significant update, Microsoft will be issuing updated Windows CDs to all licensed customers, free of charge. The new CDs can be identified by the distinctive holographic "Haskell Inside" logo, featuring a holographic version of this portrait of Simon Peyton-Jones, grinning from ear to ear.

LtU readers are encouraged to share any inside info they may have about this move!

By Anton van Straaten at 2007-04-01 16:31 | Admin | other blogs | 22170 reads

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Thanks ;-)

Thanks ;-)

By Ehud Lamm at Sun, 2007-04-01 17:49 | login or register to post comments

New Major Language?

So this is the New Major Language that you had promised us?

By Christian Lindig at Sun, 2007-04-01 17:58 | login or register to post comments

Just in time

Just in time. I was planning to learn a bit of this .Net platform starting tomorrow. Now I'll be able to capitalize on my (little) Haskell knowledge ;-)
Will they also provide a tool to "devariabilize" existing programs? A monadificator of some sort?

BTW, hi everybody. This is my first post here. Hopefully the next ones will be more costructive :-)

Antonio

By Antonio Bellezza at Sun, 2007-04-01 18:33 | login or register to post comments

judging by the picture

Judging by the picture, I gather Simon is in Hell, which has indeed frozen solid. I'm waiting to hear what the scientists say about that - so much for those the-sky-is-falling-and-the-earth-is-getting-warmer Chicken Littles. For further proof that this is no April Fools joke, Bill Gates just passed by my front window riding a flying donkey.

By emery at Sun, 2007-04-01 18:44 | login or register to post comments

In a related story...

Microsoft has determined, using a five year longitudinal study, that the majority of programming errors are caused by incompetent programmers. Today, they announced the first beta release of a new framework for "Competence-Oriented Programming" (COP). The COP framework continually monitors the progress of a project, and will disallow contributions from contributors that it determines to be incompetent. Test runs of the framework yielded surprising results; the team applied the methodology to themselves and found that 80% of the coders on the team were incompetent. These programmers were laid off and are now pursuing rewarding careers in the rapidly-growing fast food retail industry.

By Michael Vanier at Sun, 2007-04-01 22:35 | login or register to post comments

What goes around comes around

Anybody remember this April Fool from 1998?

Well no, neither do I, but I read about it on haskell.org :-)

By njbartlett at Sun, 2007-04-01 22:59 | login or register to post comments

With both Peyton Jones and

With both Peyton Jones and Hoare at MS research, this is a none-too-unexpected move. Word on the street has it that Peyton Jones will release a new .NET language using his C-- ideas, dubbed "C-flat." I can't wait to see .NET 4, when it gets Hoare triples!

It's always good to see the FP community get a good kick in the monads.

By Chad Wellington at Mon, 2007-04-02 05:19 | login or register to post comments