Section :: Blog

Microsoft Announces IronRuby

by Huw Collingbourne

Ruby leaps into .NET (again...)

Tuesday 1 May 2007.

The first signs of Microsoft’s strategy for support of dynamic languages on .NET are finally starting to emerge.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of its would-be Flash-killer, Silverlight, comes news of the Dynamic Language Runtime and a version of Ruby for .NET called IronRuby.

Suffice to say, this news of some interest to us and we’ll be following developments keenly.

More HERE or, for a slightly more in-depth discussion of the dynamic language runtime and IronRuby, there is an audio chat with John Lam - the man behind the RubyCLR and one of Microsoft’s chief Ruby guys HERE.

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Microsoft Announces IronRuby
1 May 2007

Man, this news has got to provide some pretty conflicting emotions for you guys. On the one hand it totally validates what you have managed to achieve with SapphireSteel, but, on the other hand it’s probably going to gut your business.

Tough news indeed.

Pete Hay

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- Microsoft Announces IronRuby
  2 May 2007, by Huw
  
  That’s not the case. We have long know that Microsoft had an interest in providing support for Ruby on .NET. We plan to provide the best possible development platform for Ruby in Visual Studio whether the target happens to be the CLR or the standard Ruby interpreter (or, indeed, something else). Microsoft’s aim to produce a version of Ruby that compiles to the CLR relieves us of any need to take on that task ourselves - though we will happily support that technology. ;-)
  
  best wishes Huw
  
  Reply to this message
  - Microsoft Announces IronRuby
    2 May 2007
    
    Good point. I’d overlooked the fact that IronRuby is targeted at .Net/CLR/DLR only, and not the standard Ruby interpreter.
    
    See ya, Pete Hay
    
    Reply to this message
    - Microsoft Announces IronRuby
      3 May 2007, by Huw
      
      :-)
      
      For several reasons, we were very pleased by the Microsoft announcement. This fits in very well with some things which we have under development. We are not at a stage where we can expand upon our published RoadMap just yet. However, people with a long memory may recall that when we first launched the Ruby In Steel beta program, we also made brief mention of a separate project code-named Sapphire. That project is still on-going and I hope to be able to give more details later in the year. Keep reading the blog!
      
      best wishes
      
      Huw
      
      Reply to this message