In 2005, Microsoft quietly announced an initiative to bring dynamic languages to the .NET platform. The starting point for this project was a .NET implementation of Python, dubbed IronPython. After a couple years of incubation, IronPython is ready for real-world use. It blends the simplicity, elegance, and dynamism of Python with the power of the .NET framework.
IronPython in Action offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to Microsoft's exciting new approach for programming the .NET framework. It approaches IronPython as a first class .NET language, fully integrated with the .NET environment, Visual Studio, and even the open-source Mono implementation. You'll learn how IronPython can be embedded as a ready-made scripting language into C# and VB.NET programs, used for writing full applications or for web development with ASP. Even better, you'll see how IronPython works in Silverlight for client-side web programming.
IronPython opens up exciting new possibilities. Because it's a dynamic language, it permits programming paradigms not easily available in VB and C#. In this book, authors Michael Foord and Christian Muirhead explore the world of functional programming, live introspection, dynamic typing and duck typing , metaprogramming, and more.
IronPython in Action explores these topics with examples, making use of the Python interactive console to explore the .NET framework with live objects. The expert authors provide a complete introduction for programmers to both the Python language and the power of the .NET framework. The book also shows how to extend IronPython with C#, extending C# and VB.NET applications with Python, using IronPython with .NET 3.0 and Powershell, IronPython as a Windows scripting tool, and much more.
Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.
Anonymous
Posted July 4, 2009
The authors did a very good job of presenting how Python is realized on the .Net platform and, in doing so, they ended up also writing a very good general tutorial and introduction to the Python language. The discussion of Python's "magic methods" (all those __foo__() methods) is among the most useful and understandable of any Python book.
I particularly appreciated the inclusion of chapters on the three GUI technologies (Windows Forms, Window Presentation Foundation, and Silverlight), and how they are used from IronPython. These were very well done except for the one on Silverlight. Although still useful, I thought that that chapter did not have the quality of the chapters on the other two GUI frameworks.
Overview
In 2005, Microsoft quietly announced an initiative to bring dynamic languages to the .NET platform. The starting point for this project was a .NET implementation of Python, dubbed IronPython. After a couple years of incubation, IronPython is ready for real-world use. It blends the simplicity, elegance, and dynamism of Python with the power of the .NET framework.
IronPython in Action offers a comprehensive, hands-on introduction to Microsoft's exciting new approach for ...