IronPython - yet another cool .NET language

There is a lot of interest in dynamic languages these days. These languages are often used as scripting languages and people are doing a lot of rapid development with them. Python is one of those languages and is often listed as the "P" in LAMP along with PHP and Perl. Some people are using Python as an introductory programming language in their classrooms. Others are using it as an "extra" language for courses before, after or in parallel with an Advanced Placement Computer Science course. Python does have a lot going for it.

But did you know that there was an implementation of Python that runs on the .NET Framework? Jim Hugunin, who works for Microsoft on the common language runtime team, developed IronPython to do just that. MSDN TV has a production that shows Jim talking about and demonstrating Iron Python. It looks pretty cool. It's always nice with you can see a real demo and see what things actually look like in action.

You may even want to show the video to students so that they can see what other programming languages look like.

As an additional resource, the IronPython home page is here. Oh and IronPython is written in the C# programming language.