Monday, December 31, 2007
Command Line Client for Google Reader in IronPython
Minor Mentions
- CALEBLOG: Garbage Collecting 2007 - a blogger includes being surprisingly interested by IronPython and the DLR in his mental garbage collecting of 2007.
- Python.NET - Alcides Fonseca is a fan of both .NET and Python. He likes IronPython, but prefers Python.NET.
- Playing with the DLR - Rainer experiments with the DLR. He shows code for executing IronPython, IronRuby and Managed JScript scripts by embedding the DLR (from IronPython 2) in C#.
- Mood News - Now IronPython Powered - Davy Mitchell's 'Mood News' is now powered by IronPython
- Launching the Browser - launching the system default browser with a specific url (includes cross platform notes)
- Access Unmanaged Code with Dynamic P/Invoke - an example of using the FePy implementation of ctypes for IronPython
- Parsing RSS - IronPython code for parsing RSS feeds
Friday, December 28, 2007
Using the Wiimote from IronPython
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
WMI with IronPython
There are now four examples of WMI usage on the IronPython Cookbook WMI Page.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Put a Python in Your Game
UPDATE: link updated to new location - now with video and source code available!
Sunday, December 23, 2007
IronPython Studio, Resolver, Python Papers & IronPython Talks
- Resolver One Beta Now Live! - and available for free download
- Resolver Sponsoring PyCon - gold sponsors no less, and a good chance I will be able to attend!
- Resolver Hacks Update - articles and examples (IronPython code) of using Resolver
- PyCon 2008: IronPython and Resolver Talks! - it will be a good PyCon for IronPython
- IronPython in Action: New Chapters and WPF - new IronPython in Action chapters available and WPF from IronPython
- ACCU 2008 Conference: Dynamic Languages on .NET - I'll be doing a talk on IronPython at the UK ACCU conference in April 2008
- Big Resolver News: New Beta, Release Date and Resolver Free for Personal Use
- Resolver, IronPython and the Python Papers and the One Minute Screencast - A new Resolver screencast and interviews with me and Giles Thomas (our dear leader at Resolver) in the Python Papers
- IronPython Studio: Problems, Victory and Compiled Binaries - Using the WPF and Winforms designers in IronPython Studio to produce compiled executables (plus a couple of minor problems along the way)
IronPython Cookbook Updates
- Creating XML Trees - Using XML to LINQ features, that are new to .NET 3.5, with IronPython
- File as TextReader - a wrapper class, so that you can use Python files where .NET expects a StreamReader object
- Extremely Late Binding - Late bound COM with IronPython
- MonthCalendar Control and datetime - Using the Windows Forms MonthCalendar control with Python datetime
- Listing Time Zones - Listing time zones known to the system
- Using Spreadsheet Functions with Excel 2007 - more COM
- Listing all Exceptions in the System
Saturday, December 22, 2007
IronPython on Mac OSX and Mono
Friday, December 21, 2007
IronScheme, Dynamic Languages and Comparisons
The announcement is on the xacc.ide blog.
R Tyler Ballance runs Pybench for CPython and IronPython (on Mono). This was discussed back in April, which included a useful comparison of .NET and Mono performance.
A look forward to the future of dynamic languages in 2008, including the trend of implementing dynamic languages on top of high level languages.
IronPython 2.0 Alpha 7 Released
Major points of interest with this release:
- IronPython 2 should now be PEP 342 compliant (yield should now be fully compatible with Python 2.5)
- This is the last release to be built and fully tested with Visual Studio 2005
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Return vs. Finally - C# and IronPython
Did you know that returns in finally blocks swallow exceptions in Python? (I didn't):
>>> def f():
... try:
... raise Exception('ouch')
... finally:
... return 3
...
>>> f()
3
>>>
Friday, December 14, 2007
IronPython and Jython Hello Windows
He notes "Both implementations allow setX functions in object constructor's argument list", which is unsurprising as both implementations are the creation of Jim Hugunin.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Natural Sort in IronPython vs. C# 2.0
Unsurprisingly, IronPython is slightly more concise...
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
IronPython Studio Now Available
IronPython Studio is based on the Visual Studio 2008 Shell runtime (royalty free) and can be installed without requiring any version of Visual Studio. It is hosted on codeplex.
Installer, source and screencast are available from the download page. The sources require Visual Studio 2008 (Team Edition apparently) and the SDK.
NOTE: Some users (myself included) had trouble getting this working. The magic steps are:
- Download and install the Visual Studio X redistributable from: Visual Studio Extensibility
- After you run the Install for the MS VS 2008 Shell Isolated Mode Redistributable, you must then go to the folder ("C:\VS 2008 Shell Redist\Isolated Mode") and click on: "vsshellisolated_enu.exe" to actually install the redistributable runtime.
- Install IronPython Studio
IronPython Present & Future: PyCon 2007 Podcast
IronPython is an implementation of the Python language targeting the Common Language Runtime. IronPython has excellent performance, seamless integration with the .NET platform and very high compatibility with the standard Python implementation. The first public talk on IronPython was at PyCon 2004, three years ago. Since then, IronPython has progressed from a rough prototype to a 1.0 release with a vibrant user community. This talk will present the current state and future directions of this Python implementation.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Resolver One Beta Released
Resolver is a "rapid application development tool with a familiar interface", and should be useful to power users of spreadsheets and anyone who crunches numbers with Python. The Resolver Hacks website with articles and examples is in the process of being updated to use the new API that this beta introduces.
Today three of us from Resolver were interviewed by Robert Scoble today. He is on his way to Le Web conference in Paris, so I don't know when the actual video will appear - but I'll be sure to let you know.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Microsoft Volta: IronPython to Javascript Compiler
As far as I can tell, this allows you to compile IronPython (and other .NET languages) to Javascript:
Microsoft Live Labs Volta helps developers who build distributed applications on the .NET platform, using the Microsoft development stack (programming languages, libraries, and Visual Studio). This version of Volta supports applications that run on the Microsoft CLR, a JavaScript-enabled browser, or a combination of the two.
...
In essence Volta is a recompiler. Volta works on MSIL rather than on a textual source language. Volta rewrites MSIL into any number of target languages, including, today JavaScript and MSIL itself.
...
In summary, Volta confers flexibility in the architecture dimension through:
- Language-independence. Write Volta code in any language that compiles into MSIL. For example, C#, VB, IronPython, etc.
Mono, Boo, Python, Gnome & IronPython
It has some interesting comments on the role of Python in the Gnome project and IronPython and Boo on Mono:
Python is indeed making great strides as a desktop development platform and am not sure that we are in the business of competing with it. If people like writing Python code, they should just keep writing python code.
Myself, I like the IronPython variation of Python more. IronPython just happens to be JITed Python and in most tests it is faster than CPython. For the past year or so, we have also been in love with Boo, another .NET language. Boo has support for strong typing, so for certain scenarios you will get even better performing code (basically, when you can determine the type of a variable ahead of time, instead of having the variable be entierly late bound).
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Mono and Windows Forms on OS X
Miguel de Icaza outlines the future for Mono on OS X (one of the outcomes of the Mono summit), including easy access to the MonoDevelop IDE and screenshots of a winforms application on OS X using the native drivers!
IronPython Bug that Cost me a Can of Coke
The bug relates to IComparable and value types in the underlying framework and how IronPython implements equality in an attempt to remain faithful to Python.