Re: [Rubydotnet-developer] Ruby / DotNet bridge is now live in the WebEvaluator

[Richard K. <ri...@in...>]

Well, I want to bring this list up to date on why I am involved in this.

Last week at OSCON I was invited to attend a dinner hosted by 
Microsoft's .NET/CLR/Webservices teams and coordinated by Tim O'Reilly. 
  Present were the who's who of language creators including Matz (Ruby), 
Larry Wall (Perl), Guido Von Rossum (Python). Also, Miguel de Icaza 
(Mono), Dan Sugalski (Perl 6) and scores of web services folk.  On the 
Microsoft side was the product managers for .NET and the CLR teams and 
David Stutz (former SSCLI manager).  The discussion was about 
integrating Perl/Python/Ruby with .NET.  Its well known that when you 
run a dynamic language on .NET it looses its dynamic nature and the 
discussion went back and forth on the issues involved.  The next day I 
spoke for a couple of hours with Peter Drayton, product manager of the 
CLR.  I expressed an interest in binding the Ruby (current) runtime 
with .NET as a first step, but to do it open-source (as in completely 
open) as opposed to the ActiveState Perl (closed source) binding.  He 
offered any assistance that was needed to do this (people/time...no 
$$).  So, I going to start the coordination of such an effort when 
Thomas sent his (well timed) email to the RubyTalk list.  My plan was 
to apply myself and someone who works for me (in a part time capacity) 
to build the bridge.

So, that's the history.  I really think that scripting .NET with Ruby 
would be a killer application space for Ruby, and open up all kinds of 
commercial uses of it.  One of my goals is to keep the .NET bridge open 
and documented.  The value is less in the bridge than the applications 
it enables (not that the bridge itself is not important...its vital).  
I would be interested in other folks views on this, especially John and 
Ben who have working code.

Best,

Rich Kilmer
571.332.6896 (cell)


On Friday, July 18, 2003, at 04:25  PM, John R. Pierce wrote:

> The list just got off the ground yesterday.  Mostly introductory 
> messages about
> folks plans for developing Ruby and .NET based technologies have been 
> discussed.