The ‘unfunding’ of IronRuby and Jimmy Schementi’s subsequent departure from Microsoft has caused some twinges of anxiety amongst developers who use the Dynamic Language Runtime, because the company’s motives weren’t easy to understand. What did it mean for IronRuby and IronPython users?

It may not be bad news. There are already excellent ports of Ruby and Python in .NET. The only real purpose for the average developer of using IronRuby and IronPython would seem to be as a scripting language; in other words, to interoperate with.NET code, to drive websites, to automate processes. It allows you to use .NET objects from Ruby code and vice versa; to ‘REPL’. If you are interested in writing a pure Ruby application, you’d use Ruby. Python applications run fine in Python, unsurprisingly. If you just want a scripting language in Windows, then PowerShell has now just about grown up enough to so it all, and is vastly better supported. F# also works remarkably well as a scripting language and, from the community, we have Cobra too.

In terms of the extent of its use, Ruby’s use throughout the industry ranks in twelfth place in the Tiobe Index, with less than half the usage of fifth-placed Visual Basic and sixth-place C#. It is a considerable community of users, with Ruby and Python combined having more users than VB. Within the Windows platform, however, the position is quite different, with VB and C# in first and second place and the two dynamic languages in the far distance. However, both Ruby and Pythons are of great value to Windows developers, if only because of the libraries that are available for almost every conceivable purpose.

We’ve always liked the DLR and the ‘Iron...’ languages. The technical people at Microsoft could see the great value of them, but to the middle-management they always seemed a bit ‘geeky’. It is probably time for projects like these to move to a home that is more in harmony with the underlying technical culture. For the ‘iron’ projects, the ‘unfunding’ could paradoxically serve to invigorate their development, and guarantee their longer-term future.

Cheers,

Laila