Reaching Out to the .NET World

If you know people, particularly in New York city, who work with Microsoft's .Net environment I'd be grateful if you could make them aware of Michael Foord's .NET: IronPython from the Ground Up class, running on January 21.

My main contacts with the .NET world are currently limited to the SharePoint environment (yes, you can use the SharePoint APIs from IronPython), and I suspect (but do not know) that the .NET world isn't quite as heavily imbued with the open source ethos as the Linux/UNIX world is.

I think we still need to get the word out. Despite all the noise about the DLR introduction (including excellent publicity in MSDN magazine), plus the availability of IronPython and IronRuby, dynamic languages don't yet appear to have the traction in the .NET space that they do in the Unix world.

Or am I talking through my hat? I've written before that I think the Windows environment is a great platform for supporting open source applications -- if you think about it, it's the logical way to put open source on the majority of desktops.

The event should also be of interest to the existing Python user base who want to be free from some of the CPython implementation's current restrictions. Here are some of the reasons why you might consider IronPython:

* Using Python libraries from .NET
* Using .NET libraries from Python
* Writing multi-threaded Python code without a GIL
* Embedding IronPython in .NET applications for user scripting
* Exploring new assemblies and classes with the interactive interpreter
* System administration and scripting
* Developing for Silverlight (Python in the browser)

I've been a Resolver user for over a year now, and I've been impressed with IronPython's stability and usability. It would be nice to see more .NET users at PyCon

Note: the seminar linked above is a commercial activity of Holden Web LLC

Starting 2010 With a Bang

Holden Web's first one-day workshop was, thanks to Jacob Kaplan Moss, a sell-out success. As a result, and partially due to some excellent feedback from the New York City Python Meetup group, we will be running the same workshop in New York on January 22, again with Jacob presenting. We are also offering a one-day IronPython workshop presented by Michael Foord on January 21.

Since the three-day Introduction to Python classes have been well-received in Virginia we are also offering that class in New York on January 18-20.

To try and make things easier for those attending and smooth out our administration we are using Eventbrite for the first time. I would really like to know how easy people find it to get information about our classes and to enroll for them. Anyone wanting specific information not mentioned in the course outlines is, of course, welcome to contact us for further details.

If you would like to take one of these classes simply follow the links above (or click here for a list of all our current offerings, then just go to the ones you are interested in) and click the Order Now button which should be clearly visible. Once you have entered the details click the Review Your Order button, and you have fifteen minutes to check that you have entered the correct information before you click the Pay Now button. It really couldn't be much easier, I hope.

We are also very interested to know what other event you would like us to run. This is the front end of a new venture for Holden Web, and your opinions and requirements (places you'd like to attend presentations as well as other topics) will help us to move in the right direction. So feel free to contact us with your suggestions, or make them in comments below. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Two Thousand Posts Behind

While recording material for the first three episodes of a new Python podcast (you'll have to wait*) I realized that I've been less in contact with the doings of the Python community than usual over the last six months, due to project and teaching work.

When I am in "less busy" mode and have some spare time I often follow the comp.lang.python newsgroup, offering advice and opinion when the occasion allows. I also find the time to track the Planet Python newsfeed, which is full of interesting (and often detailed) information about what various Python personalities have been up to. When I get busy, as I have been this year, those information sources tend to take a background role.

I just started on the task of "catching up" with Planet Python, and have had to recognize that there is no way I am going to. There have been over two thousand posts since the start of June this year, and I just don't have the time to run through it all -- particularly not if I want to follow up all the interesting stuff I see. In the first minute of examination I saw details of an IronPython application that allows you to examine .NET binary assemblies and instantiate the various classes you come across, interacting with them through an interactive console.

This was interesting because it's been one of the reasons many Java shops keep Jython in their toolkit. Java is also a compiled language not an interactive one, and so it's difficult to learn about the tools without going through an intensive "write/run/debug" cycle that makes it difficult to condense your experience into learned material. With Jython you just use the interactive Python interpreter, creating instances as you like, calling their methods and examining their attributes. "Plays well with others" has always been one of Python's strengths.

Anyway, suffice it to say that there's been some amazing stuff going on in the Python ecosphere recently. I am really looking forward to next year's PyCon (February, in Atlanta). There were so many great proposals that even with an expansion from four tracks to five there wasn't room to accommodate all the stuff that could have gone in. So expect some pretty amazing Open Space sessions too!

* Provisionally entitled "A Little Bit of Python"

PyPy Continues to Catch Up

Interesting news from the EuroPython sprints at Vilnius via Holger Krekel. PyPy supports Django well enough to run the Pinax application put together by an open source team coordinated by James Tauber. It's great to see Python expanding in so many directions at once. The future is definitelyto be interesting.

Django seems to be becoming one of the "how good is your implementation" tests for Python implementations. Not only are the PyPy team using it in this way, but IronPython and Jython are as well. Since Jython is now in alpha with a Python 2.5-compatible implementation the picture is looking better and better every day.

The one thing nobody has discussed much is the attitude of the PyPy, Jython and IronPython development teams to migration towards Python 3.0. Does it represent the next wave, or will it end up as an isolated development?

Learning IronPython

Some good advice from Curt Hagenlocher on the IronPython mailing list in response to this question:

I program in Python, but my programs are typically run from the command line or IDLE. I have never built a GUI, and would like to try my hand at creating GUIs that I can run my programs from. Is there a book or tutorial that covers IronPython, IronPython Studio and the dot Net platform that is aimed squarely at the new user?

Any book or tutorial about the .NET platform in general will be relevant to IronPython's use of .NET. In fact, taking existing C# or VB examples and translating them into Python may be a good way to leverage your existing Python skills while teaching yourself the .NET class libraries.

As far as IronPython-specific resources go, you can't beat the IronPython Cookbook at http://www.ironpython.info/index.php/Main_Page. If you want to see some sample Python code that uses the Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation libraries to produce a GUI, just go to the Contents at http://www.ironpython.info/index.php/Contents and scroll down a bit.

It's fashionable to pooh-pooh .NET, but remember that this stuff runs on Mono too, so it could be an important way to build cross-platform compatibility in Python applications. Not everything that came out of Redmond is worth ignoring (but let's not talk about OOXML), so there's possibly something to be gained from a knowledge of that framework. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Resolver Released

In yet another piece of good news for Python fans, Resolver Systems have released their first product. It's a spreadsheet that you can manipulate in Python, and it's received a lot of interest from the financial communities on both sides of the Atlantic. [You would not believe how much of the world's financial dealing is controlled and managed by spreadsheets; it's really quite scary].

Resolver One is written in IronPython by a team which includes the Fuzzyman (occasionally also known as Michael Foord), of Voidspace Techie Blog fame, and it's currently the largest product developed in that languages, with a total codebase (including tests) of over 100 kloc. The company is bravely making the product available (though not, I believe, as open source) free for non-commercial use.

Mike and other members of the Resolver team will be at PyCon in Chicago in March, which is yet another reason to attend this most excellent conference. Registrations will, I am assured, be open by the beginning of next week--I have already secured my place by acting a test subject of the registration process, and will attempt to stay for a couple of the sprint days too this year.

Microsoft Fully Engages Open Source?

Now this is really interesting. Michael Foord reports that a lead Microsoft developer has responded to an issue report by saying

One option might be a non-technical solution: Instead of you redistributing the library (or modified library) we distribute it w/ IronPython - and then you're just including the combined package. There's other reasons why it'd be good for us to do this (help, encodings, warnings, etc...).

Michael's understanding of this is in reference to the complete Python standard library rather than just the Decimal module. If so this is excellent news for all Python users, since it will broaden the common code base between CPython and IronPython and make portability between the two environments easier to achieve. It would be interesting to know whether the developers and maintainers of FePy, the open source IronPython distribution, would view such a move with apprehension or relief. Internationalization support can be a significant effort, and Microsoft have a lot of experience in that area.

My own hope is that this move might eventually broaden the support base for the standard library, which hasn't developed as much as I had hoped in 2.5. There will be some sort of reorganization of the library in (I think) 3.1, but I haven't heard much about that yet.

Michael Foord's blog post is amusingly prioritized from an industry perspective, which is one of the charms of the blog: he was reporting big things for Resolver, which I am sure will become a significant Python application in short order. But it's a little like "Three Hundred Japanese Killed in Earthquake: Ohio Man Breaks Ankle" with a different twist. Good luck in Barcelona, Michael (and in New York and Paris too, guys).

I suspect that we have just seen the magic of the Python license at work: there isn't much doubt in my mind that Python's explicit permission to redistribute for broad purposes without opening up your own code makes it easier for organizations with a large proprietary code base to incorporate the language into their own technologies. I know from reports at PyCon that Jim Hugunin has been surprising audiences inside and outside Microsoft at how easy it is to do things in the .NET environment with Python. Surely full IronPython support in Visual Studio must inevitably follow.