Cook Computing

Jim Hugenin has released IronPython 0.6. Also. Jason Zander, CLR Product Unit Manager, has announced that Jim is joining the CLR team. Taken from the distribution this is a sample WinForms app:

from System.Windows.Forms import *
from System.Drawing import *

f = Form(Text="Windows fun with IronPython", HelpButton=True,
         MinimizeBox=False, MaximizeBox=False)

f.FormBorderStyle = FormBorderStyle.FixedDialog
f.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen

b1 = Button(Text="Say Something", Location=Point(30,30), Size=Size(100,30))

def push(data, event):
    l = Label(Text="IronPython Is Alive!", ForeColor=Color.Red)
    l.Location = Point(30, 50+f.Controls.Count*25)
    f.Controls.Add(l)

b1.Click += push

f.Controls.Add(b1)
f.ShowDialog()

Performance is a key issue here and I wrote some simple code to get a very unscientific rough feel for what IronPython can achieve. The following code running in IronPython does about 1,000,000 calls to Add per second:

class Adder:
    def Add(self, x, y):
        return x + y

z = 0
adder = Adder()
for i in range(10000000):
    z = adder.Add(z, 1)
print z

whereas the following C# code does about 30,000,000 calls per second (deriving from MarshalByRefObject to prevent inlining of the call - its 20 times faster when inlined):

class Adder : System.MarshalByRefObject
{
    int Add(int x, int y)
    {
            return x + y;
    }

    public static void Main()
    {
        Adder adder = new Adder();
        int z = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < 100000000; i++)
            z = adder.Add(z, 1);
        System.Console.WriteLine(z);
    }
}

This order of performance difference doesn't seem too bad to me if you want the benefits of coding in Python, and you can always re-implement performance critical code in C# later on. Optional typing and type inference might be another way of approaching optimization but I don't know if there are any plans for that in Python.

I'm looking forward to seeing the slides for Jim's talk at OSCON last night and the blogging about it.