Is anyone using Python for .NET?

[Paul Boddie]

"Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname at yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<brusdr$7takb$1 at ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>
> What I decided was, Python has too much community, library, and industry
> support behind it, and a lot of these other languages carry major design
> risks, i.e. going from imperative to functional programming.  So as of
> today, Python is winning in practice despite whatever might be better in
> theory.

Yes, despite the theoretical advantages of many languages, Python has
a lot of working code available for it, some well-established
approaches for certain kinds of activities, and quite a bit of
guidance and support around those activities. Consequently, upon
discovering that more legwork is necessary to get up to speed in those
other languages in order to implement a given solution, one can be
rather dissuaded from pursuing those other languages further.

> See any parallels with Java or C# history debates?

Really, one can always ask, "Is this language good enough?" I've seen
a number of cases where implementation languages being used have been
less than appropriate for the applications concerned and where a
different language could have been used, not just for reasons of
elegance or performance, but mainly for access to much better
application frameworks. For example, why use C++ for Internet server
applications when Java (or Python) has a lot more framework support in
that area?

There was some mention of "Worse is Better" on Ian Bicking's weblog
which convinced me that one can almost base one's career on such
debates, however. ;-)

> > Well, I get a fair amount of mileage out of Jython, Apache Axis (SOAP)
> > and so on, but I guess that this isn't your point.
> 
> It could be for your problem domain, but it isn't for mine.

I suppose that's a good argument for improved across-the-board
interoperability. Shouldn't one be able to write Internet server
applications in C++ whilst using various Java-based Apache frameworks?

> I would hope that there's a replacement strategy for the interop concept.
> Aren't the FSF guys doing something like that?

DotGNU Portable.NET perhaps:

  http://www.dotgnu.org/pnet.html

Paul