A strategic vision for dynamic languages.
As operating systems consolidate around managed interfaces, they'll
choose the Java and .Net VMs, not the Perl, Python, or PHP VMs. But the
agility of the dynamic languages and the collaborative energy of their
open source communities are two of the pistons that crank the engine of
progress. These worlds need to converge — and at the O'Reilly Open
Source Conference there was new evidence that they will. Jim Hugunin,
father of Jython (Python for JVM), made a pair of dramatic
announcements. He has released the first version of IronPython (Python
for CLR/Mono). And by the time you read this, he'll have started his
new job at Microsoft. Good hire! [Full story at InfoWorld.com]
In my keynote talk at the Vancouver Python Workshop,
I stressed the strategic importance of integrating dynamic languages
with the Java and .NET runtimes. I've written a lot about dynamic
languages and yet, when asked to define what they are and why they
matter, I struggle. So from now on, I'm going to point people to this whitepaper by David Ascher, who is the managing director of ActiveState and led the development of Komodo, a Mozilla-based IDE (integrated development environment) for dynamic languages.
… [Jon's Radio]