IronPython In Action

For about six years I felt in love with .NET and SharePoint. In the last year I’ve also learned to love PowerShell. I was really impressed of the dynamic and power you can gain with a scripting language in combination with the .NET Framework. So I’ve started to combine SharePoint and PowerShell through embedding PowerShell and developed SharePoint PowerActivity, Power EventReceiver and Power WebPart. It was really amazing to see how fast you can develop small SharePoint apps with this stuff. But as a C# developer you sometime miss the object orientation in PowerShell. On the BASTA! Spring I first meet Michael J Foord after his talk about the DLR and embedding IronPython. The talk was similar to my talk about embedding PowerShell. Embedding IronPython seemed to be almost as simple as embedding PowerShell, but with a dynamic and object oriented language. I was really excited - for sure I’ve to learn IronPython. Unfortunately resources about IronPython are very limited. Luckily Michael and Christian Muirhead has just written IronPython In Action.

IronPython In Action covers all you need to getting started with IronPython for an .NET or Python developer. It is written coherent without needless ballast, well suited to the philosophy of the language itself. My favorite chapters are “Sliverlight: IronPython in the browser”, “Agile testing where dynamic typing shines” and “Embedding the IronPython engine”. The book has inspired me to found the CodePlex project IronSharePoint (coming soon) showing how you can develop SharePoint apps with IronPython. I’m convinced that in the near future dynamic languages will get more attention again, just think at the “dynamic” keyword in C# 4.0. Absolutely worth to keep an eye on it!

The power of combining statically and dynamically typed languages are really incredible!