Stories by Paul Krill and Doug Dineley

Microsoft accommodates dynamic languages

The growing popularity of dynamic languages, such as Perl, Python, and Ruby -- which are popular for building Web applications -- has caused companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems to stand up and take a look. Although Microsoft has championed development using traditional Windows development languages such as Visual Basic and C#, the company has recently made accommodations for dynamic languages, with projects such as IronPython and Phalanger hosted on Microsoft's CodePlex site for community development. Still, Microsoft is largely leaving it to the community at large to provide the dynamic-language capabilities on the .Net Framework. Jason McConnell, the Visual Studio product manager responsible for all languages at Microsoft, talks about the state of dynamic languages on .Net.