JLam on DNR

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I never mind a long drive with a podcast. A few days ago I listened to John Lam on Dot Net Rocks. I'll admit that sometimes the DNR people can be annoying to me (think Richard Campbell saying over and over like it's a joke "Managed JavaScript??") but it was all worth it to hear some of the internal goings on with the Iron Ruby project.

Gleaning: Iron Ruby is a ways off. I got somewhat impatient and have been using IronPython in the meantime, but more on that later. That's not a small decision for me because I am of the Norvig perspective on learning a new language - it takes the length of time needed to think in terms of the idioms of that language, as opposed to just writing your code with different syntax and keywords (ala writing C# in Ruby).

Gleaning: Ruby is a powerful language for creating domain specific languages. That meme has been floating in my head for a while - listened to a good Software Engineering Radio podcast on the topic sometime back.

Gleaning: JLam talks a bit about how the learning curve for new languages these days revolves around the frameworks for languages - I think the idea of Ruby combined with .NET is that the .NET libraries will fill a gap that Ruby has always missed in library support. Dangerous or brilliant? In other words, I'm sure the open source crowd (is/will be) up in arms because this will, in their minds, dilute the community effort behind a language. Brilliant because the Mort you know (who is probably your boss) will have a better level of confidence about using it.

Gleaning: Iron Ruby is implemented in C# but Managed Javascript for Silverlight is a VB.NET implementation!

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