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Microsoft IronPython goes beta

Martin LaMonica Former Staff writer, CNET News
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer covering green tech and cutting-edge technologies. He joined CNET in 2002 to cover enterprise IT and Web development and was previously executive editor of IT publication InfoWorld.
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Martin LaMonica

Microsoft has released a beta version of IronPython, the code name for a version of the Python scripting language for Microsoft's .Net development software.

The IronPython toolkit is designed to let Python developers make use of all of the "libraries" of prewritten code in the .Net Framework. Applications can run on Windows or, using Novell's Mono software, on other operating systems, including Linux.

The release of IronPython will add a scripting language to Microsoft's tools arsenal.

Scripting, or dynamic, programming languages are rising in popularity with developers . The development tools for these languages, such as PHP, Perl and Python, are being beefed up with high-end features, such as close integration with relational databases.

The person behind IronPython is Jim Hugunin, a highly regarded open-source programmer. The source of the IronPython beta is available under Microsoft's shared source license.