Microsoft Takes Python Scripting Language to .NET
TechWeb | News | Microsoft Takes Python Scripting Language to .NET | April 4, 2005
For people who wonder what the point of the third clause of the PHP license. IronPython is a good example of the reason.
Some of the benefits of IronPython from the Introductory Blog Entry:
# Integrated with the .NET Framework - IronPython code can easily use .NET libraries also, Python classes can extend .NET classes.
# Fully dynamic - IronPython supports an interactive interpreter and transparent on-the-fly compilation of source files just like standard Python.
# Fast - IronPython 0.7 is up to 1.8x faster than Python-2.4 on the standard pystone benchmark. The key to IronPython’s performance is that it compiles Python code to .NET Intermediary Language which is then translated to optimized machine code by the runtime.
# Managed and verifiable - IronPython generates verifiable assemblies with no dependencies on native libraries that can run in environments which require verifiable managed code.
I wonder how Python people feel about that.
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I think most of them are pretty excited. The author, Jim Hugunin, demoed this at OSCON last year. MS was so impressed, they hired him to hack on this full time. The real question seems to be whether the license is nice or not.
Well someone did start an IronPHP project. Guess they didn’t see the PHP license. The Phalanger project is more off the ground anyway: http://www.php-compiler.net/
On the Python side, IronPython is still very much in alpha status. Boo is more developed: http://boo.codehaus.org/
Think it’s a good thing as well. Slowly MS and Sun are waking up to the mindsets of a large group of developers.
In PHP we’ve got two similar projects, one very serious but with a restrictive license;
http://www.php-compiler.net/
These guys now have phpBB running under .NET - that’s what you see right here: http://www.php-compiler.net/phpBB/
Another is moving more slowly and seems to be taking much inspiration from IronPython: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ironphp/ - they’ve got some very basic prototypes working but not much else.
Re that license clause: ‘The name “PHP” must not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software’ - guess that depends on how do you define ‘derived’?
IronPHP was informed of the license and changed it’s name (to what, I don’t know). What is it with Iron and .net?
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