IronPython released

Jim Hugunin, the creator of Jython, has announced the first public release of IronPython - an implementation of Python for .Net.

There have been previous attempts at a .Net Python, most notably by ActiveState, but they have been too slow to be useful for anything other than a proof of concept. However IronPython is notable because it runs Pystone (the standard Python benchmark) 1.7 times faster than CPython 2.3. There is a paper on the IronPython website explaining how this is achieved.

If you are interested in programming for the .Net environment then download it and give it a try.

The download is available at http://www.ironpython.com.

Jim has also joined the Microsoft CLR team, so hopefully M$ will help raise the profile of Python within the Windows community.

Dave - The Developers' Coach

Cool.

Though I'm not a huge .NET fan, it's good to be able to give more reasons to use Python

Fantastic!

Not a few of my colleagues look down their noses at Python - this puts it smack in the middle of their favorite Dev' env'.

And it works with Mono too

Static compilation!

Definitely something I'll be considering for future stuff - even if it's Alpha at the mo.

grim