from vb6 to Python

[Martijn Faassen]

Luis M. Gonzalez wrote:
> Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
>>Unfortunately this is currently not near production use, and whether
>>Microsoft is funding IronPython development is up in the air:
>  
> It's true that he Ironpython's mailing list is a little bit innactive,
> but this is just because there's only one person in charge of
> Ironpython at this moment (although Microsoft was looking to hire a new
> developer to help on this).

A new developer is interesting news and makes it more likely the future 
funding status is assured.

> However, the innactivity is due to the fact
> that Jim Hugunin, its developer, has begun working for MS just a couple
> of months ago, and as he says, there are tons of new CLR features to
> learn that are applicable to dynamic languages.

I realize that, and I'm sure that impacts things. That doesn't change 
the fact that IronPython as it stands now isn't done, and there isn't a 
clear idea of what will happen. Talk about "open source doesn't have a 
clear roadmap"; that seems to be true at least if Microsoft is doing the 
open source. ;)

> You should also give credit to Jim: he's the man who developed Jython,
> which is a complete inplementation of Python written in Java.
> He also created Numeric and co-authored Aspect, another programming
> language.

I know who Jim is, and he deserves plenty of credit. I'm just passing 
along the concerns of a major IronPython fan, who doesn't know what's up 
himself and wants to fork the code. That's at the very least not a sign 
of good community management. :)

> So I'm sure that Ironpython will be a reality soon, and a very good
> one...

I was pointing out that IronPython is *not* a reality right now, which 
is the impression that was being given to a newbie before. I wanted to 
counter an impression that might cause newbies to struggle with 
IronPython only to find out it's not ready yet. Whether IronPython will 
be mature soon is open for debate.

Regards,

Martijn