Why Python won't work on .net

[Martin v. Löwis]

Duncan Booth <duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk> writes:

> > The question is whether a Python implementation for .NET would be CLS
> > compliant (CLS == Common Language Specification). The existing
> > implementation has shown that this is not possible without giving up
> > parts of the Python semantics.
> > 
> The main problem is that functions are first class objects in Python, but 
> not in the CLS. The CLS uses delegates to refer to functions, and a 
> delegate encapsulates both an object and a pointer to a method.

In addition, I think one problem is that in CLS, a class has a
pre-determined set of data attributes, whereas in Python, instances
grow new data attributes as they live.

> I have been playing around with a variant on the managed Python compiler, 
> and I think I have figured a way to implement Python which might just get 
> around this bottleneck. Unfortunately it requires a lot of refactoring from 
> the original model, and I'm only working on it occasionally in my spare 
> time. 

Very interesting. Are you willing to share the intermediate results
that you get? Publish early, publish often :-)

Regards,
Martin