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IronPython Moving Forward Again

Posted by timothy on from the interesting-times dept.

immytay writes " Jim Hugunin (Jython, Numeric, and other projects) has issued the first release of IronPython since joining Microsoft in August of last year. IronPython runs on .NET and Mono and is supposedly faster than the C version of Python. This new version is 0.7, while 0.6 was released last summer and covered here. According to the IronPython mailing list, Jim has help from a Microsoft co-worker, and he plans to work toward IronPython 1.0."

2 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Java and .NET Scripting by fm6 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    There seem to be a lot of Java and .NET scripting languages that are just ports of Python or Perl. I suppose these have their uses, but the disconnect between the language and the concepts of the underlying runtime strike me as a problem.

    Lately, I've become interested in Groovy, a JVM-based scripting language that combines concepts from Java (syntax, access to the class libraries) with concepts from Perl (dynamic typing, native syntax for collections and regular expressions). It would be interesting to see something similar for .NET.

    1. Re:Java and .NET Scripting by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Check out Boo. It's really a phenomenal language, and much more mature and stable than the version number (0.5) would lead you to believe.

      Groovy has been taking a lot of heat lately. Boo seems not to suffer from the management/community problems Groovy has. In fact, Boo is just plain more exciting; Groovy is just Ruby disguised in Java syntax, as far as I can tell, whereas Boo takes what's best about Ruby (heavy emphasis on closures/blocks), Python (indent-based scoping, first class functions), and C# (static typing, properties, annotations, "using", p/invoke, .NET native), and one-ups them with type inference. It really does provide the best of both static and dynamic typing; there is NO compromise here as far as I can tell.

      As a bonus, the tool support is already very good. As with any self-respecting scripting language, it includes an interactive interpreter. (Boo scripts can be interpreted or compiled.) The Visual Studio .NET debugger already works with Boo, and if you write your Boo code in SharpDevelop (a free IDE for .NET platform) you can get code completion, syntax highlighting, code folding, etc. And since it's all statically typed, there is hope for IntelliJ-like refactoring tools, although I don't think any exist yet.

      Bottom line, I think any Python, Ruby, or Groovy fan should take a long, hard look at Boo. You will find a whole lot to like.