Best tool for playing with .NET API? LINQPAD v. fsi v. Other?

Question

I have started to learn F# because it looked like fsi.exe would be a rapid way to experiment with various .NET API functions interactively.

But I recently discovered that LINQPAD can interactively execute F#, C#, VB.net code for testing invocations of various .NET API .

Which tool do you like for experimenting with .NET APIs? LINQPAD, fsi or something else?

What about experimenting with invocations of the Win32/Win64 API? Writing of up C++ program to better understand a certain USER32 call (or lanmgr call) is tedious. Using powershell for calling these functions is even more tedious because you need to write it in C# and then embed that into the powershell source code. The best option seems to be Python for calling the Win32/64 api.

What is your favorite tool for this? 

Thanks

Siegfried

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siegfried heintze

Answer 1

My favorite tool is F# script file (*.fsx) with F# interactive window in Visual Studio.

Because of F# syntax (briefness and type inference) is much easier to explore any .NET API.

Using native .NET interop it's pretty easy to call Win32/Win64 API functions. (If you have a book Expert F# 3.0, Ch. 18 is dedicated to explain F# interop with native code libraries)

In F# interactive window you can easily get rough estimates about performance of your code using #time directive (I don't remember such feature in LINQPAD).

LINQPAD is a great tool but honestly I don't need anything else it if I have VisualStudio with F# installed.

 

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Petr