Python and VS.Net

[Matt Gerrans]

> > My boss seems to think it is good to have programs that are in managed
> > code because it is more 'portable'.  Not that there's another complete
> > .NET runtime besides Microsoft's but he does not understand that.

By the way, just because you compile something with the compiler that comes
with .NET doesn't mean it is managed code.    In particular, if you did
compile Python with it, I don't think the result will be any more managed
than the what you compiled with a previous version of the Microsoft
compiler.

Anyway, Python is *already* more portable than .NET and it is *already*
managed code running in a "managed" environment.   It is called the
interpreter (or "virtual machine" in Sun's parlance, or "runtime" as
Microsoft would have it -- "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.").

If your Python code could thereby access the .NET libraries, that would be
another story.   That would be like Jython for .NET.   I was hoping that was
what Active State's Python-in-VS.NET-thingy was, but alas it was too good to
be true: it is only (so far) a color-syntaxing Python editor that takes two
or three minutes to load up.

- Matt