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V1.0 of the IronPython project for .NET released

Scott Guthrie has announced the release of V1.0 of the IronPython project for .NET, available for download from CodePlex.

Check out the screencast recorded by Jim Hugunin (lead architect for IronPython) and Jon Udell did to demo a bunch of the languages features. Jim has a great post describing the background and goals:

"The more time I spent working on IronPython and with the CLR, the more excited I became about its potential to finally deliver on the vision of a single common platform for a broad range of languages.  At that same time, I was invited to come out to Microsoft to present IronPython and to talk with members of the CLR team about technical issues that I was running into.  I had a great time that day working through these issues with a group of really smart people who all had a deep understanding of virtual machines and language implementation.  After much reflection, I decided to join the CLR team at Microsoft where I could work with the platform to make it an even better target for dynamic languages and be able to have interesting technical discussions like that every day."

More dynamic languages on .NET, that's where this is all heading...Scott Guthrie:

"Going forward, you are going to see even more dynamic languages appear on .NET, and a bunch of cool new scenarios become enabled."

Jon Udell:

"From a strategic perspective, Microsoft now has a stake in the ground. It aims to make dynamic languages, in the managed environment of the .NET Common Language Runtime, safe for the enterprise. Sun has shown some interest in doing the same for dynamic languages on the Java Virtual Machine, but not much, which is ironic given that Jim Hugunin started working on JPython -- now Jython, the Java equivalent to IronPython -- nine years ago."

Jim Hugunin underscores this point:

"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!" 

I agree, this a key milestone for the development of .NET. Next? Well, projects such as Ruby.NET and RubyCLR show the potential in this space...read George Lawton's article on these efforts.

Posted: Sep 06 2006, 09:11 AM by admin | with 1 comment(s)
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Comments

JrzyShr Dev Guy said:

From Alex Barnett via Scott Guthrie... Dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python have had a lot of buzz...

# September 25, 2006 7:05 AM