Mono, Boo, Python, Gnome & IronPython

By Michael Foord -
Miguel de Icaza has a blog entry responding to an article on 'Mono Usage in the Enterprise':
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).

Comments

  1. Bill Mill12/07/2007 2:56 pm

    > in most tests it is faster than CPython.

    What?? in every test I've seen, it's about twice as slow. Where are these tests?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael Foord12/07/2007 4:08 pm

    IronPython runs Pystopne quite a bit faster than CPython. For pybench it runs some bits a lot faster, some bits a lot slower and most about the same.

    I'm not aware of any other benchmarks but there may well be some around. In my experience it feels about the same for most things. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Luis12/07/2007 4:19 pm

    In my experience, ironpython is still a lot slower than cpython, at least 2x. And comparing it to cpython + psyco, it simply can't compete.
    Unfortunately there are no benchmarks available (only for ironpython/Mono).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael Foord12/07/2007 6:08 pm

    Hmmm... well I've been developing almost exclusively with IronPython for nearly two years now. Whilst in some areas it is slower, in others (particularly functional calls and non-exceptional exception handling) it is much faster.

    Overall it definitely feels similar and certainly not half the speed. Of course for a different application or using particular libraries there may be issues.

    ReplyDelete
  5. james_02712/08/2007 2:36 am

    @fuzzyman

    it's nice to heard from you that you're developing with IronPython for nearly two years now, what are you application? WFP? winforms? or ASP.NET?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Michael Foord12/08/2007 11:35 am

    A spreadsheet application written in IronPython called Resolver. The next blog entry here will be about our free public beta... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Markus6/02/2008 9:43 am

    Boo is at least 3x faster than IronPython..

    Its the fastest python(-like) language out there.

    I hope the IronPython and Boo Guys will bundle their powers and produce THE compiled / .NET language for the next decades

    ReplyDelete
  8. Michael Foord6/02/2008 10:41 am

    The IronPython guys are working on a dynamic language on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime and are not going to morph IronPython into a statically compiled language.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Extending Abobe Flash Player and AIR with Python and Ruby

By Michael Foord -
An intriguing blog entry about an Adobe experimental project. It is a C/C++ cross- compiler for the flash player and AIR. This means that you can (will be able to?) cross-compile the Python / Ruby/ lots of other language runtimes and then run them in Flash. The blog entry contrasts this approach to the DLR which requires the re-implementation of dynamic languages - hence IronPython and IronRuby. The project is already beyond proof-of concept, they even have Quake III cross-compiled and running in Flash. Extending Adobe Flash Player and AIR with C/C++ Cross-Compiler Quake 3 has already been ported to managed code , but this is even more impressive. Whether the Python interpreter can be cross-compiled to run on top of another runtime (with completely different basic types), without changing the language semantics at all, has yet to be proved - but it is a very interesting project. (It also means that Python/Ruby will possibly be enabled only by additional optional downloads - but don'
Read more

IronPython Tools for Visual Studio CTP3

By Michael Foord -
At PyCon this year Dino Veihland announced IronPython Tools for Visual Studio, an extension to Visual Studio 2010 for working with IronPython. It features Python syntax highlighting, awesome auto-complete (intellisense) and a host of other features for working with IronPython code in Visual Studio. It can be used with the free Visual Studio shell and doesn't require you to own a full copy of Visual Studio. The third CTP (Community Technology Preview) has been made available for download. IronPython Tools for Visual Studio We are happy to announce a minor update to the IronPython Tools for Visual Studio.  IronPython Tools for Visual Studio (IPyTools) is a set of extensions available for Visual Studio 2010 which supports development of IronPython applications.  This release is our 3rd Community Technical Preview (CTP) and builds upon the previous two releases.  The release is a minor update which includes bug fixes and a number of small features.  You can download the latest rel
Read more

Further Adventures of the Debugger

By Michael Foord -
Harry Pierson (Microsoft IronPython PM) has been experimenting with writing an IronPython debugger ( ipydbg ) on top of the .NET MDbg APIs. When we last left him , he had implemented Just My Code (JMC) support allowing you to step into IronPython code. Since then he has made a lot of progress including a colourful REPL (interactive console) and solving some difficult problems around getting to real values behind boxed IronPython variables (needed for showing local variables). He has blogged extensively on what he has been up to (more recent posts last): Showing Source Code Colorful Console IronPython ConsoleColorMgr (the colorful console code pulled out into a separate IronPython module) A Little Hack...err...Cleanup Getting Local Variables Displaying Values Command Routing Getting Arguments REPL Console A lot of functionality is now present. In the command routing entry Harry outlines the seven commands supported by the debugger so far: Continue, Quit, Show Stack Trace, Show Locals,
Read more