Ironpython book?

[alacrite]

Anyone know if there is a book for Ironpython in the works? A good
knowledge of .NET and Python is enough to get started but just poking
around Ironpython homepage it seems like there are some new language
features added to handle some quirks with working within the CLR.
Although I could be wrong.

Thanks

-Jake

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

I'll let somebody jump in and say, "You're crazy!" But it seems to me
the interest in IronPython on this list is pretty subdued. Maybe
because most people are running on Linux or Macs?

Here's a thread

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/2762f6dfc5f72651/

I would like to see more discussion of it. Even if it means discussion
about why people are skeptical or otherwise in wait-and-see mode. Being
an XP user, I would love to see more about it.

rick

 

[Alex Martelli]

Anyone know if there is a book for Ironpython in the works? A good
knowledge of .NET and Python is enough to get started but just poking
around Ironpython homepage it seems like there are some new language
features added to handle some quirks with working within the CLR.
Although I could be wrong.

I don't know of any such books, but if M$ is willing to slip me a
suitable sweetener (to make it worth my while to install Windows again
after years of blissfully Windows-free existence: it must at least cover
the expense of the extra Zantac and Maalox consumption, plus suitable
compensation for pain and suffering), AND lend me the consulting
expertise of the Ironpython team, hey, I _could_ be persuaded to write
"IronPython in a Nutshell" (not that I'd ever admit it in public, of
course...).


Alex

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

Alex:

So is the ruling hierarchy all using the UNIX command line on Mac OSX?
Free BSD? Linux? I'm a struggling novice. I'm just curious.

rick

 

[Heiko Wundram]

Am Dienstag 18 April 2006 05:03 schrieb (e-mail address removed):

it seems like there are some new language
features added to handle some quirks with working within the CLR.
Although I could be wrong.

I'm no Microsoft friend (let me begin by saying that), but I don't think I'm
very paranoid if I consider new language features Microsoft adds to an
existing Language Specification not to be a necessity for the language to run
on Windows systems (and in this case .NET), but rather an attempt to secure a
grip on proprietyzing a language, and to make users ultimately depend on
their implementation of it. Remember what Microsoft tried/did with Visual J
and Java?

--- Heiko.

 

[Alex Martelli]

Alex:

So is the ruling hierarchy all using the UNIX command line on Mac OSX?
Free BSD? Linux? I'm a struggling novice. I'm just curious.

Uh? Who's "the ruling hierarchy"? If you're talking about the PSF, I
guess Linux, overall, may hold the upper hand, but there's surely plenty
of Windows, Mac and BSD users too (me, I'm a Mac fan, with Linux a close
second and other BSD variants not too far -- I was a Windows guru a few
years ago, cfr <http://www.aleax.it/TutWin32/>, but that was mostly out
of merely mercenary motives;-).


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

...
Q: "So Alex, what are you doing with your 20% time at Google right now?"
A: "Working for Microsoft!"

Worlds collide!

Guess I was mostly waxing unjustifiably nostalgic to back when I was a
"free lance" for hire, hm?-)

Google does have Windows programmers, of course (such Windows apps as
Google Earth, the Toolbar, Google Desktop, Picasa, etc, didn't spring
into existence on their own...!-), but I'm not even sure if there's any
Python there (my work's mostly on the infrastructure, server-side part
of things, so I don't really know much about our client-side stuph).


Alex

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

Who's "the ruling hierarchy"?

I guess I just meant the congnoscenti. Them that knows what's what.

I suspected. I've played with Linux distros, but never a Mac. That
takes more $$ than M$, and Apple is even more proprietary than MS, if
you ask me. It interests me how many Open Source advocates and
anti-Microsoft folks are willing to pay top dollar for Macs, which I
guess means that, for them, it's less a Cathedral vs. Bazaar thing and
more about It Works vs. It Doesn't?

I'm no Microsoft lover, but XP doesn't crash on my machines. So I
continue using it, along with Python, Firefox and whatever else I
please.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

 

[Jay Parlar]

I don't know of any such books, but if M$ is willing to slip me a
suitable sweetener (to make it worth my while to install Windows again
after years of blissfully Windows-free existence: it must at least
cover
the expense of the extra Zantac and Maalox consumption, plus suitable
compensation for pain and suffering), AND lend me the consulting
expertise of the Ironpython team, hey, I _could_ be persuaded to write
"IronPython in a Nutshell" (not that I'd ever admit it in public, of
course...).

Q: "So Alex, what are you doing with your 20% time at Google right now?"
A: "Working for Microsoft!"

Worlds collide!

Jay P.

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

I'll let somebody jump in and say, "You're crazy!" But it seems to me
the interest in IronPython on this list is pretty subdued. Maybe
because most people are running on Linux or Macs?

umm. CPython runs just fine on Windows, and can talk to most Windows-
specific stuff via the win32 extensions and ctypes and python for .net:

http://www.zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNet

</F>

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

If you are interested in a pure managed-code
There's the rub. I don't know what "pure managed-code" means. But I'll
definitely look into CPython.

Thanks

rd

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

I suspected. I've played with Linux distros, but never a Mac. That

takes more $$ than M$, and Apple is even more proprietary than MS, if
you ask me.

Depends. Sure, if you dive into Cocoa programming and stuff. But you have to
keep in mind that under the hood it's BSD - and even runs a X-Server if you
want to. So I can use all my Linux staples + have a fancy OS for
multimedia-stuff.

It interests me how many Open Source advocates and
anti-Microsoft folks are willing to pay top dollar for Macs, which I
guess means that, for them, it's less a Cathedral vs. Bazaar thing and
more about It Works vs. It Doesn't?

I can't comment on this in general, but on the CCC (Chaos Communication
Congress, a Hacker-con) last year the notebook-distribution was like this:

30% Macs
30% ThinkPads
40% rest

So - it seems that quality is important, and of course any decent Hacker
will run a *nixish OS.

Diez

 

[BartlebyScrivener]

I can't comment on this in general, but on the CCC (Chaos Communication
Now THAT sounds like a fun event for a journalist to cover! I'll have
to look into that one.

Thanks

rick

 

[Alex Martelli]

There's the rub. I don't know what "pure managed-code" means. But I'll

You can find much material about that on the net, e.g.

definitely look into CPython.

That's a good choice: it's surely more mature than IronPython. But the
latter, with Jim Hugunin at the helm, must not be discounted either: as
it and Mono mature further, IronPython has the potential of becoming a
favorite choice.


Alex

 

[Alex Martelli]

Find me a 2-kg, 5+ battery hours, well-heeled laptop (with wifi, 801b,
etc etc) below the $999 of the iBook G4... it's hard today, it was just
imposible back when I bought mine in 2003. I intended to load Linux on
it (i.e., I bought it strictly for the nonpareil HW price/performance),
and I know a few people who do that, but that was before I found out how
well MacOSX works. IOW, Apple is very price-competitive _in the niches
it plays in_ -- it just doesn't play in many "cheap and nasty" niches
(such as, 4-kg, hardly-any-battery-life laptops;-).

Depends. Sure, if you dive into Cocoa programming and stuff. But you have to

....which is hardly "more proprietary than MS", anyway, since OpenStep
does live, btw;-).

keep in mind that under the hood it's BSD - and even runs a X-Server if you
want to. So I can use all my Linux staples + have a fancy OS for
multimedia-stuff.

For me, just like for most people I've discussed it with, the reasoning
is similar. For example, Chip Turner (once of RedHat, and a major
contributor to RPM tools, now a colleague at Google) blogs at
<http://other-eighty.blogspot.com/> and has a few notes on the matter
(e.g. "there's nothing like sitting in the middle of a meeting and
having the ONLY WORKING LAPTOP in the room. Wireless AND suspend, both
working..." -- that's about his Powerbook;-). I'd say Chip mostly
switched from Linux to Mac for the same reason he mostly switched from
Perl to Python though he was a CPAN contributor too. Others feel even
more strongly: e.g., Rob Pike, another colleague, apparently just
dislikes Linux technically (mostly, I think, X11, but not just that) and
that's why he uses Macs (Windows isn't even in the picture, of course).

I can't comment on this in general, but on the CCC (Chaos Communication
Congress, a Hacker-con) last year the notebook-distribution was like this:

30% Macs
30% ThinkPads
40% rest

Not too different from what you see, e.g., at OSCON, though there may be
more Macs there. At Google meetings the distribution is more like
45-45-10, since Macs and Thinkpads are the laptop brands Google gives
its employees for work use (and few bother to apply for a third
alternative when they can just pick up either at a "tech stop").

But, sure, here we're talking about people who are primarily engineers,
so the main ethos is indeed "it works/it doesn't". Opensource tends to
work better (and indeed many of Mac's advantages come from its BSD
underpinnings)...

So - it seems that quality is important, and of course any decent Hacker
will run a *nixish OS.

Not necessarily: Tim Peters, among my top choices for "top Hacker in the
PSF" Lifetime Award, prefers Windows. So, s/any/most/...!-)


Alex

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

...which is hardly "more proprietary than MS", anyway, since OpenStep

does live, btw;-).

But certainly not PyObjc bindings for that

For me, just like for most people I've discussed it with, the reasoning
is similar. For example, Chip Turner (once of RedHat, and a major
contributor to RPM tools, now a colleague at Google) blogs at
<http://other-eighty.blogspot.com/> and has a few notes on the matter
(e.g. "there's nothing like sitting in the middle of a meeting and
having the ONLY WORKING LAPTOP in the room. Wireless AND suspend, both
working..." -- that's about his Powerbook;-). I'd say Chip mostly
switched from Linux to Mac for the same reason he mostly switched from
Perl to Python though he was a CPAN contributor too. Others feel even
more strongly: e.g., Rob Pike, another colleague, apparently just
dislikes Linux technically (mostly, I think, X11, but not just that) and
that's why he uses Macs (Windows isn't even in the picture, of course).

I'm pretty satisfied with linux sitting on my desktop. But I totally agree
with you and whomever else that it certainly is a major PITA when it comes
to the niceties of mobile computing, including power-save-modes and WLAN.

No, I _don't_ want to trick some M$-WLAN-Drivers into running under Linux.
And spend 2 1/2 Weeks exploring unknown depths of my ACPI-Bios-support.

Not necessarily: Tim Peters, among my top choices for "top Hacker in the
PSF" Lifetime Award, prefers Windows. So, s/any/most/...!-)

Ok. I'll take that back then.

Diez

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

There's the rub. I don't know what "pure managed-code" means. But I'll
definitely look into CPython.

Essentially -- everything is fed through the M$ .NET CLR; no direct
access to native system calls.
--

 

[John Salerno]

Anyone know if there is a book for Ironpython in the works? A good
knowledge of .NET and Python is enough to get started but just poking
around Ironpython homepage it seems like there are some new language
features added to handle some quirks with working within the CLR.
Although I could be wrong.

Thanks

-Jake

Just out of curiosity, is Python.NET a dead project?

 

[Alex Martelli]

Just out of curiosity, is Python.NET a dead project?

AFAIK, it's a long-completed research project. I do not know of anybody
planning to fork it to a new project, though that of course does not
rule out that somebody might be planning to do so.


Alex

 

[John Salerno]

AFAIK, it's a long-completed research project. I do not know of anybody
planning to fork it to a new project, though that of course does not
rule out that somebody might be planning to do so.

But is IronPython sort of the 'official' .NET implementation of Python
though? I know there is a difference between the two, but I haven't
heard about Python.NET in so long that I thought maybe it wasn't being
developed/used anymore. IronPython seems to be the equivalent of Jython
for .NET.