Announcing PyCs, a new Python-like language on .Net

[Doug Holton]

>>Is there a real danger that MS will make its own version of
>>Python, pushing it into the market, and we end up with a
>>dominant version that only works with MS software?

No, I don't think so.  They already have Visual Basic for that.  They 
are making their own version of Python (IronPython), but it will work 
with .NET or Mono (an open source clone of Microsoft's .NET framework).

And there are two other python-like languages now under development that 
will also target Mono as well as .NET: PyCs and boo.


> What M*soft should do is build libraries like the Speech Development Kit and
> Direct X into open source modules for Python. This way they are not trying
> to destroy open source but to join with it.

Yeah, that's the area I see Microsoft stuff still having an advantage, 
with libraries like DirectX, text to speech, force feedback, etc.  But 
you can access Microsoft's libraries from Python, see: 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/uncassist
The problem is that then your application will only run on Windows 
unless you can get it to work with Wine: http://www.winehq.org/

An advantage of IronPython/PyCs/boo is that they would make accessing 
libraries like DirectX much much easier.  You'll be able to access them 
the same way you would from Visual Basic or C#.  But a more 
cross-platform compatible way would be to use OpenGL (pyopengl or csgl 
if you are using .net) or SDL (pygame or sdl.net) instead of DirectX.