Python.NET, MONO and Visual Studio etc.

[Paul Prescod]

Max wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2001 21:16:39 -0800, Paul Prescod <paulp at ActiveState.com> wrote:
> 
> >As .NET cranks up, customers may express interest in an equivalent for
> >Python.
> 
> Would not the product be sucessful with an opposite strategy? If I understant
> the CLR concept in .NET correctly, then a component "compiled" to run under the
> CLR becomes "language invisible", i.e. the target cannot determine (and does not
> care) what the source language is, correct?

This is true also of the bridge strategy. You compile bridge objects
that look to other .NET objects as if they were implemented in .NET.

The tradeoffs to compiling everything into .NET runtimes are familiar
from Jython: lowered runtime performance, no access to extensions like
NumPy, PIL, PyOpenGL and subtle compatibility problems with the main
Python interpreter. Neither approach is clearly better, but I think that
ActiveState values complete backwards compatibility very highly because
our corporate customers do.

 Paul Prescod