Reaching Out to the .NET World

If you know people, particularly in New York city, who work with Microsoft's .Net environment I'd be grateful if you could make them aware of Michael Foord's .NET: IronPython from the Ground Up class, running on January 21.

My main contacts with the .NET world are currently limited to the SharePoint environment (yes, you can use the SharePoint APIs from IronPython), and I suspect (but do not know) that the .NET world isn't quite as heavily imbued with the open source ethos as the Linux/UNIX world is.

I think we still need to get the word out. Despite all the noise about the DLR introduction (including excellent publicity in MSDN magazine), plus the availability of IronPython and IronRuby, dynamic languages don't yet appear to have the traction in the .NET space that they do in the Unix world.

Or am I talking through my hat? I've written before that I think the Windows environment is a great platform for supporting open source applications -- if you think about it, it's the logical way to put open source on the majority of desktops.

The event should also be of interest to the existing Python user base who want to be free from some of the CPython implementation's current restrictions. Here are some of the reasons why you might consider IronPython:

* Using Python libraries from .NET
* Using .NET libraries from Python
* Writing multi-threaded Python code without a GIL
* Embedding IronPython in .NET applications for user scripting
* Exploring new assemblies and classes with the interactive interpreter
* System administration and scripting
* Developing for Silverlight (Python in the browser)

I've been a Resolver user for over a year now, and I've been impressed with IronPython's stability and usability. It would be nice to see more .NET users at PyCon

Note: the seminar linked above is a commercial activity of Holden Web LLC