Meeting Summary: April 2, 2007

[Mike Pirnat]

Thanks to everyone who attended tonight -- a bunch of new folks and
some people we haven't seen in a long time.

Social Time
* Pizza
* Pop
* Socializing

Drew Robbins: IronPython
* Growing community and popularity of Python: ILM, CivIV, Google, et al.
* .NET provides shared runtime for many languages and enables deep
integration between languages
* Initially poor performance with dynamic languages; IronPython
now as performant or better than CPython
* Goals: True implementation of Python; seamless integration with .NET
* Importing "clr" module glues .NET-style method calls, etc....
eg, strings get a .Trim() method
* A matter of some debate...
* Helps .NET folks who might be familiar with .NET-style coding
* Makes Python purists feel dirty
* Live demo: C# class into DLL, use in IronPython
* Putting a Pythong string into a C# int gives a TypeError
* C# DateTime not compatible with Python datetime.datetime
* C# strings ARE compatible with Python strings and Unicode strings
* Won't like your .pyc's that get built with other versions of
the Python interpreter
* Live demo: Using WPF to set up a nice window using IronPython
* Cool up until it threw an exception and killed the entire interpreter
* UI runs in entire thread, but UI itself is not threadsafe,
so caution is a good thing
* Being used for...
* Live playing with API's (like WPF)
* ???
* Does not ship with .NET, but easy to get from CodePlex (MS's
Sourceforge-alike); Mono project on Sourceforge has some additional
resources
* Will run on anything that has .NET 2.0+
* Can build a standalone executeable
* Live demo: accessing Outlook via COM magic
* Don't have *all* the nice Pythonic goodness in some COM
containerish things ... so some parts of sequence/iteration are baked
in but not all (can do "for .. in" but not "len()")
* Sort-of-working until we hit an ugly COM error
* Community-driven; in theory it ships every 3 weeks and fixes
50%+ of bugs in each release
* MS has 4-5 devs working on IronPython
* BSD-style license
* Has Visual Studio SDK integration
* Makes ASP.NET nicer, less verbose, more efficient (to build)
* Not for Vista yet
* Live demo
* Can host IronPython in COM objects (jam it into Office, IE, etc.)
* Misc. MS Q & A
* Zune giveaway using random.randint()

Sprinting - for REAL this time!
* When: Saturday, April 14 @ noonish
* Where: Bier Markt in Ohio City

Next time...
* Monday, May 7, 2007
* At AmericanGreetings.com
* Christian Wyglendowski: Source control with Bazaar
* Gary Bernhardt: RESTdb (or something else)

And in June...
* Monday, June 4, 2007
* At AmericanGreetings.com
* Brian Beck: TuxDroid (or something, if he's around and willing)
* Matt Wilson: rpy

Hope to see you next month (or at the sprint)!

--
Mike Pirnat
mpi...@gmail.com
http://www.pirnat.com/

[Ralph Heimburger]

Mike,
I can do 250 easier since that is the remainder of my hardware budget for last yr.

Ph. 216-906-3640
Fax 702-995-3640

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[Ralph Heimburger]

disregard that msg, sent to wrong recipient.

www.1stpointinc.com

Ph. 216-906-3640
Fax 702-995-3640

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The information transmitted in this e-mail is intended for the exclusive use of the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain privileged or confidential information.  
If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are prohibited from reading, printing, duplicating, disseminating or otherwise using or acting in reliance upon this information.  
If you have received this information in error, notify the sender at 1stpOint inc. immediately, delete this information from your computer
and destroy all copies of the information.
Thank you.
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--
Ralph Heimburger
1stpOint incorporated
www.1stpointinc.com