O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

Tutorial
IronPython 1.0: Python on the .NET Framework
Jim Hugunin, Architect, Microsoft
Martin Maly, Software Development Engineer, Microsoft

Track: Python
Date: Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005
Time: 8:30am - 12:00pm
Location: E143-144

"IronPython" is the codename for a new implementation of the Python programming language on the .NET Framework. It is fast - up to 1.8x faster than Python-2.4 on the standard pystone benchmark. It supports an interactive interpreter with fully dynamic compilation as well as static compilation to produce pre-compiled executables. It's well integrated with the rest of the framework and makes all of the .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers. This tutorial will show you how to use IronPython to bring the power of .NET to Python and the power of Python to .NET.
Topics covered include using existing .NET libraries from IronPython, extending IronPython with new code in C# (or other .NET languages) and embedding IronPython in your .NET application to enable scripting. We'll cover the common cases where these tasks are easy, and we'll also go into some of the dark corners to explain where you might to get into trouble and how to get out of it. The examples will range from using the new Avalon GUI framework to driving Microsoft Office applications to working with a variety of external libraries such as GTK#. This tutorial is targeted at both Python programmers looking to take advantage the .NET Framework and at .NET programmers looking to learn how Python can make their jobs easier.