IronPython 2.6 has been in CTP for a few months and now has officially been released. I spent the past summer learning Ruby and not sure that I want to spend time learning Python, but certainly having IronPython makes this a very attractive idea when you can use Python with the .NET Framework.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with IronPython, per the CodePlex Project Website:
“IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language running under .NET and Silverlight. It supports an interactive console with fully dynamic compilation. It's well integrated with the rest of the .NET Framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining compatibility with the Python language.”
If you are using C# 4, you can use the new C# 4 Dynamic Keyword to work with IronRuby, IronPython, and other dynamic languages, so you may want to start there just to see some of the coolness of using these dynamic languages with a static language. You can, of course, also use the dynamic languages with Silverlight as well.
IronPython is an open source project by Microsoft and you can grab the latest release of IronPython as well as the source code on CodePlex. For those of you interested in learning IronPython, you may want to check out IronPython in Action
.