IronPython Moving Forward Again

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."

Comments

Re:Except for Mono

[nightski]

What you will find is that this is a bunch of BS. They took advantage of the new features in the .NET Framework 2.0 - which will be standardized in the CLI. .NET 2.0 isn't even out by Microsoft yet - so of course Mono isn't going to support it. But Mono is planning on eventually having full support for .NET 2.0. So it will work. Wait till 1.0 - everything will be working then.

Re:Phrase it any way you like

[chris_mahan]

Someobody expand on that: I believe ironPython is not compatible with .Net 1.0 because of python itself, something to do with dynamic allocation in python. It's something that is supposed to work in 2.0

Re:Phrase it any way you like

[Keeper]

If you could demonstrate that the changes were superflous in nature, perhaps you'd have a point. But given that you have no idea what was changed or the reasons for it, you're just being paranoid (and/or trolling, given the nature of your post).

v1.1 of .Net lacked certain features necessary for running a dynamic language (ie: perf would blow). These features were added in v2.0 (ie: perf no longer blows).

Read. React. Regurgitate.

[Keith Russell]

nt

No, I think we need t.

Every platform that has a .NET implementation already has a native Python implementation, which makes Hugunin's work, while interesting, ultimately redundant. I would love to hear how this little side project reinforces Microsoft's monopoly power in operating systems.

Re:Read. React. Regurgitate.

[damiangerous]

Not redundant at all. It's faster than CPython, and it can use both CLR and Python classes as well as extend CLR classes with Python.

Java and .NET Scripting

[fm6]

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.

Re:Java and .NET Scripting

[the quick brown fox]

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.

Re:Phrase it any way you like

[IainCartwright]

Paolo Molaro (one of the mono guys) said on the Ironpython mailing list:

"IronPython 0.7 compiles with the current mono from svn (not with the released 1.1.5, though the patch is minimal)."

And Jim Hugunin has said in the same place that if Ironpython does not compile because it deviates from the spec. then it is a bug and should be entered as such.

Try and avoid knee jerk reactions. You'll just annoy your high horse.

open source maybe, where's the community?

[mike_sucks]

As Edd Dumbil pointed out, there's a number of questions that need to be answered before it is worth getting behind IronPython, such as:

- Is it actually Free Software?
- Why do I need a passport account Passport to participate?
- Why are you bothering to release source code if you're not willing to
accept patches?
- Why don't you want to get it working with Mono?

And so on.