Microsoft has snatched up one of the open source communities favorite programmers Jim Hugunin. The very man responsible for creating Jpython/Jython is now working with Microsoft. Despite what some people believe this isn't the end of the world. Jim Hugunin has announced that he will stay committed to his open source projects as he works to improve Microsoft's support for dynamic languages.
Even though Hugunin started to work for the software giant August 2, 2004, he promises that he will continue to work on IronPython. IronPython is a new Python implementation targeting the .Net and Mono platforms. Already IronPython is 1.7 times faster than Python 2.3, and IronPython generates verifiable assemblies with no dependencies on native libraries that can run in environments which require verifiable managed code. With Hugunin vast experience with Java and Python, there's no doubt that he's going to bring some interesting things to the table.
I have to admit I didn't think I'd ever see Jim Hugunin support anything from Microsoft, yet alone work for Microsoft. It's interesting to hear how Hugunin has converted over to CLR. Joking around about how he'd write an article "Why .NET is a terrible platform for dynamic languages." Then after getting use to CLR, he couldn't put it down sort of speak.
View: Jim Hugunin's Microsoft Blog
View: IronPython
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