Microsoft is working on a phased approach to enhancing its support for dynamic languages on the company's .Net platform. Jim Hugunin, creator of the IronPython language and a development leader on Microsoft's CLR (Common Language Runtime) team, told eWEEK that Microsoft is working to help usher in support for dynamic languages on top of the CLR in a variety of levels or phases.
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Member since:
2005-07-07
Member since:2005-06-29
And fail to understand the difference between a language and an implementation.
Anyway though...
This is actually fairly exciting to see. .Net 1.0-now has basically been: Look, you can use your C++ code and build on in a decent language! However, decent language meant C# or something else static and object oriented.
Now we're seeing dynamic languages, and functional languages (still object oriented, I think that's an absolute requirement for .net compatibility). So now you can build your application in Python/Ruby and C# for the more intricate parts or the parts that need the most raw speed. You could even go all the way to writing it in C++.
Of course, Python programmers have been able to mix Python with C for a long time. But let's be honest: Unless you're a good C programmer who's quite familiar with Python you're not in for a treat there. That doesn't mean the feature is useless, it just limits it to a smaller group of python programmers. And it also allows problems associated with C development to crawl into your, largely, Python program.
So we've gone from .Net:
C#, with a dumbified version for dummies called VB.Net. Plus you can combine it with your old C++ code! A platform for moving on...
To .Net:
C#, with dynamic languages such as Python. A platform to start new projects in...
That's my highly editorialized take.
Member since:
2005-07-20
Member since:
2005-11-19
http://hlvm.org/ (High-Level Virtual Machine) is an open-source library that is adding dynamic language support to http://llvm.org/ (Low-Level Virtual Machine) which, in turn, is open-source and backed by Apple.
Hang on people we may be on for an interesting showdown yet!
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-14
Member since:2005-07-06
Does anyone know if IronPython works in Mono? I'm a long-time Python developer, and the potential for performance improvements is intruiging...
IronPython targets .NET and Mono, and has worked with previous releases of Mono out of the box. I don't know about the respective current releases, but it's worth a try.
