[Edu-sig] IronPython 1.0 on Slashdot

[Arthur]

dblank at brynmawr.edu wrote:

>
>I'm working on porting our Python Robotics and associated AI code to
>IronPython.
>  
>
Don't know which came first, the chicken of the egg, but is it 
presumptuous to assume that Microsoft's funding of


    Institute for Personal Robots in Education at Bryn Mawr is not
    totally unrelated to your decision to make the port.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/jul06/07-12robotics.mspx

There was a time in the not too distant past where it would not seem 
quite as wild-eyed radical to suggest some level of discomfort with even 
the appearance of corporate funding influencing academic outcomes. At a 
minimum it seems to me that you should make sure that your audience is 
aware of the facts when posting an opinion about the good works of 
Microsoft from your academic perch.

I have nothing in particular against Microsoft. I do believe that 
technology has been a factor among factors disruptive of some sensible 
levels of sensitivity to issues connected to the corporate sponsorship 
of academic and educational endeavors. Not here in particular, but 
certainly in general, I think it has indeed had a tremendous impact in 
influencing the debate about the role of technology in education. There 
is little academy left, in its more idealized sense - from what I can 
tell, at least in the US. Things *really are* different, really have 
evolved into something else again. My own sense is that necessary 
equilibriums have been disturbed, and instead of Kirby's triumphalism 
about the role of technology and the Silicon Forest - I feels something 
closer akin to dread. There is evolution, and there are evolutionary 
dead-ends.

Another friendship secured, I'm sure.

Art






>I think .NET is going to be big in Linux. I hope Guido @ Google and Jim @
>Microsoft continue to work towards such common good.
>
>-Doug
>
>  
>
>>"IronPython version 1.0 was just released after 3 years of
>>development. Jim Hugunin, the creator of Jython and the lead developer
>>of the Shared Source IronPython, made the birth announcement earlier
>>this week. From the announcement: 'I wanted to understand how
>>Microsoft could have screwed up so badly that the CLR was a worse
>>platform for dynamic languages than the JVM... I found that Python
>>could run extremely well on the CLR — in many cases noticeably faster
>>than the C-based implementation. [...] Shipping IronPython 1.0 isn't
>>the end of the road, but rather the beginning. Not only will we
>>continue to drive IronPython forward but we're also looking at the
>>bigger picture to make all dynamic languages deeply integrated with
>>the .NET platform and with technologies and products built on top of
>>it. I'm excited about how far we've come, but even more excited by
>>what the future holds!'"
>>
>>http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/06/2134234&from=rss
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