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IronPython 1.0 is Born
dougblank writes "IronPython version 1.0 was just released after 3 years of development. Jim Hugunin, the creator of Jython and the lead developer of the Shared Source IronPython, made the birth announcement earlier this week. From the announcement: 'I wanted to understand how Microsoft could have screwed up so badly that the CLR was a worse platform for dynamic languages than the JVM... I found that Python could run extremely well on the CLR — in many cases noticeably faster than the C-based implementation. [...] Shipping IronPython 1.0 isn't the end of the road, but rather the beginning. Not only will we continue to drive IronPython forward but we're also looking at the bigger picture to make all dynamic languages deeply integrated with the .NET platform and with technologies and products built on top of it. I'm excited about how far we've come, but even more excited by what the future holds!'"
we're also looking at the bigger picture to make all dynamic languages deeply integrated with the .NET platform and with technologies and products built on top of it.
Somewhere in a billion-dollar mansion (OK it's in Washington), Gates and Ballmer are doing a very good "evil scheme" laugh.
Yeah, yeah, I know, Mono. Software patents aren't valid everywhere, Microsoft is failing anyway, blah blah. But if you think this wasn't the design all along, you may want to check into an institution that helps folks deal with reality.
VB is a language that poor programmers find very easy to hack up (unmaintainable) solutions in.
I imagine that the same programmers will find Python (and therefore IronPython) considerably harder to hack up solutions in.
Because it is CLR, it is easy for you to integrate python code with the ugly solutions poor programmers have written in VB.net. So next time some non-programmer shows you their awful business-critical program and asks you to add a feature, you will be able to do it in (Iron)Python. I see that as a good thing.
I don't see IronPython being adopted by the non-programmers though.
Microsoft has had an excellent reputation for backward API compatibility (better than any other software vendor on the planet).
As someone who has been using Microsoft's development products since the 70s (I started with the Macro Assembler on the TRS-80!) I can say I completely disagree. They freely abandon APIs and products, leaving developers stranded. Just ask PenWindows developers. Look back at the mess that was Win32s, and the painful upgrade path from earlier Windows versions(I have Win16 apps from the early 90s that simply won't run on XP). Just look at how they have left VB6 developers stranded.
Meanwhile, on Linux, I am using APIs and tools that were around in UNIX in the 70s.
I ran it on one of my Python apps and it actually slowed it down by a factor of 1.77. Lots of caveats here, but this is the opposite of what I expected to see.