Signs on the Sand

 John Lam announced the very first pre-alpha drop of IronRuby - Microsoft open source (!) implementation of the Ruby language, licensed under Microsoft Permissive License. This release contains early bits of Ruby implementation for .NET based on the DLR(Dynamic Language Runtime), you actually have to build it if you want to run it. Scott Guthrie shows command line and WPF hello-world sample apps built with IronRuby.

IronRuby team takes unique (for Microsoft) approach - not only IronRuby implementation is going to be open source (IronPython is open source already), they actually plan to host it on RubyForge and accept source code contributions:

IronRuby Project Plans

Next month we will be moving the IronRuby source code repository to be hosted on RubyForge.  As part of this move we are also opening up the project to enable non-Microsoft developers to enlist in the project and contribute source code. We'll then work to implement the remaining features and fix compatibility issues found as more libraries and source are ported to run on top of it. 

The end result will be a compatible, fast, and flexible Ruby implementation on top of .NET that anyone can use for free.

Unbelievable. Either Microsoft don't see any money behind IronRuby or this is some kind of evil experiment.

I love Ruby and .NET. Sure I will be contributing.

Btw, don't be confused with IronRuby and Ruby.NET projects. IronRuby is new Microsoft Ruby implementation, while Ruby.NET is soon-to-be-open-source Ruby implementation started by Queensland University in Australia. While IronRuby uses parts of Ruby.NET compiler, John Lam sees IronRuby as continuation of the Ruby.NET. Both projects seem to be similar and so I believe Ruby.NET story is probably over.

I'm playing with IronRuby right now. This is cool stuff, now I want it to be fast, I want full Visual Studio support and I want it to be my primary language. Screw Java and C#, Ruby is where all fun is.

And finally another great news about Visual Studio 2008 from Scott Guthrie:

You'll see Beta2 ship later this week - so only a few more days now.

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