Iron Python : what are good uses for Iron Python [closed]

Answer 1

The biggest benefit of IronPython is that it brings the worlds of Python and .NET very close together.

If you have libraries (assemblies) written in C# you can import those directly into IronPython and use them, like this:

import clr
clr.AddReferenceToFileAndPath('MyAssembly.dll')

import MyNamespace

c = MyNamespace.MyClass()

c.MyFunction()

This is very nice for reusing exisiting .NET code when scripting or even interactive use with the IronPython interpreter.

Ordinary CPython requires Python .NET to do the same or similar things. In my experience, Python .NET works most of the time, but not always and IronPython provides a much more polished experience in accessing .NET from Python.

IronPython will probably always lag the reference implementation of CPython in terms of standard library support etc., but in general the development is not that far behind, that it would hard to work with coming from a CPython background.

Lastly, there are a few substantial differences between CPython and IronPython, to which, one should pay attention. Example - garbage collection (bit me the other day...).

Answer 2

IronPython with WPF is the most productive way to design a GUI that I'm aware of. Almost all of the app pictured below is written in IronPython. Only very small parts are done in C# or C++/CLI for performance reasons.

Sure, you do miss some WPF/C# integration, but you gain much more on the productiveness side.

IronPython is also much easier to extend than CPython. You take your C++ code and just add a small C++/CLI wrapper on top of it. CPython has nothing which is as easy as this. That's the reason that I've started using IronPython, because I got tired of writing wrappers for my C++ code in CPython. Boost.Python, SWIG, and the like didn't work for me.

Answer 3

You can use it for cool things like having an embedded web server within your application which can be developed with one of the available Python web frameworks. It is much easier and smoother to develop for than hosting an ASP.NET web server within your application. CherryPy for example comes with a builtin web server as well that should work fine with IronPython with a few small modifications.

Answer 4

First: IronPython is really more of a compiler than an interpreter in the strictest sense - it will be used to generate .NET Assemblies from your python source files. So yes, you can write apps and most anything the .NET Framework can do.

One of the largest benefits of IronPython is that it has (effectively) no GIL - meaning that if you are both writing Python code and it is multi-threaded - you can often get performance that is better than CPython without having to spawn multiple process and pickle objects across the boundaries. It doesn't solve the problem of concurrency, but .NET provides much more robust constructs for dealing with it. I think this is pretty niche honestly, but it is certainly there.

The python.org wiki page for IronPython lists a bunch of key differentiators as well:

Answer 5

You use it to write Python code that runs on the .NET platform. It's good for anything that Python is good for.

The Python language is the Python language, no matter what. IronPython is an implementation of the runtime for that language - the support code that compiles your source, creates a virtual machine to execute the bytecode in the resulting .pyc file, communicates with the OS in order to put command line arguments into sys.argv, and all that other fun stuff. (Well, OK, the .NET platform itself does a lot of the work, too. :) )

Answer 6

I think Resolver Systems built their products with IronPython. So there is definitely some real-world use of IronPython.

Enthought also anounced that they will port NumPy to IronPython and .Net. This will certainly broaden the appeal of IronPython.