Microsoft Corporation sponsors IPython

http://ipython.org/microsoft-donation-2013.html

by mtct • 13 years ago

150 57 13 years ago

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Of course. MS supports Python in Azure, too... they seem to be embracing Python in general into the Microsoft ecosystem.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Seems like a good sign.

phildini• 13 years ago

You can build Django apps in Visual Studio now. The end is nigh.

spongle2• 13 years ago

Yes Django developers can get your hourly dose of not responding alert bubbles, HRESULT crashes and upper case menus as well!

I spent a couple of hours with visual studio python tooling a couple of months ago and couldn't face it. Its not the extensions that are bad, it's just I've been using Visual Studio since 6.0 up to 2012 and it's just fucked me in the eye socket constantly since day one. I've only just got rid of the sympathy for the kidnapper of my mind.

tekknik2• 13 years ago

Not a fat chance in hell I'll use Visual Studio over Sublime Text. However it is good that MS is at least attempting to accommodate the open source community.

xradionut• 13 years ago

If they were embracing Python, they would replace PowerShell with Python. :)

gecko2• 13 years ago

PowerShell and Python both make fairly lousy CLIs out-of-the-box, and you can already talk to .NET objects in Python through either IronPython or pywin32's COM interop, depending on what you're up to. In other words: you can already use Python in place of PowerShell. Do so in good health, and be merry. :)

arocks• 13 years ago

Or pre-install Python on Windows like in all the other operating systems.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

Microsoft's Merchant Server (precursor to Commerce Server) was primarily written in Python and shipped in 1996. This is due to the fact that they acquired eShop for the software, a company co-founded by Greg Stein (who is pretty well known in the Python community).

Python has been fairly well embraced by some parts of Microsoft for quite a while now, and while some of that support has come and gone over the years (eg. IronPython), they still have projects like Python Tools for Visual Studio which are very solid.

sanxiyn• 13 years ago

Dino Viehland, who works on Python Tools for Visual Studio, used to work on IronPython. No doubt knowledge gained implementing the language helps with implementing development tools...

taude3• 13 years ago

This is all true. There were early ODBC drivers and COM wrappers for Python, too, back in this time period.

tomrod• 13 years ago

That's good news. I wonder if this will lead to convergence in the Linux and Windows ecosystems? Generalized graphical frameworks and whatnot?

lutusp• 13 years ago

I wonder if this will lead to convergence in the Linux and Windows ecosystems?

Most people who understand Microsoft's history sincerely hope not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

Quote: ""Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors."

adrianlmm• 13 years ago

I suppose MS is using IPython internaly.

nbevans• 13 years ago

Always a conspiracy on HN when it involves Microsoft, eh?

bostonpete• 13 years ago

Why is it a conspiracy theory to infer that if Microsoft is supporting a technology financially that they're likely using it internally (or planning to)? MS isn't a charity...

sanskritabelt• 13 years ago

Well come on, who uses python internally and doesn't use ipython?

mercurial• 13 years ago

I use bpython, personally.

jofer• 13 years ago

Also see the Numfocus mailing list discussion on this for a touch more detail, if you're interested: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/numfocus/h8qfxqlFu0k/fGLxAgO...

polskibus• 13 years ago

While you're at it, dear Microsoft, please rekindle IronPython development!

UPDATE: I've just noticed a new IronPython release after more than a year! Is that a sign of things to come ?

smortaz3• 13 years ago

Microsoft has not been directly involved with IronPython for several years now. the community is active and doing well. we do fully support it in Python Tools for Visual Studio and lurk on the alias to answer questions. We're committed to continuing support in PTVS.

zokier• 13 years ago

That must have been one hell of a demo:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1n72bm/microsoft_don...

Basically the PTVS team did a demo of IPython for Microsoft Research big cheeses and asked them to consider donating (used Z3Py theorem prover for the demo). At the end of the hour they were ready to cut the check.

smortaz3• 13 years ago

i am the guilty party. it was an all up talk + demo of IPython on Azure (on a linux VM!), with the punchline delivered using one of MSR's own libraries (z3), wrapped w Python API's (by leonardo de moura). the big cheeses at the mtg were tony hey (VP) & dennis gannon. i had been encouraging them to do more w python at MSR (research work, wrap existing libs with python, etc.) for a while and everything just came together on that day. i should say that the real credit goes to the IPython team as it demos really really well :).

the donation comes w no strings attached & they can spend it any way they want.

fperez_org4• 13 years ago

The work @smortaz and the PTVS team have done with IPython over the years is awesome, and we're really very thankful for this!

dep_b• 13 years ago

Could someone enlighten me on the special status Python seems to enjoy inside Microsoft? It's pretty well supported for something that is not invented by Microsoft.

untog• 13 years ago

They also support node.js, from what I recall. And you can use PHP on Azure.

stekoz• 13 years ago

And especially Drupal.

awad• 13 years ago

From what I hear, Node is getting a lot of love (all things considered) at Microsoft and especially at Azure.

jmspring2• 13 years ago

If you look at http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/downloads/

Azure supports (in varying degrees):

.NET, node.js, php, java, python, and ruby.

It also has CLI tools for linux and osx.

If you look into the Azure docs, you will see that many of the services have an XML definition that can certainly be implemented on differing platforms.

VS also appears to get some love including additional JS support, PVTS, etc.

smortaz3• 13 years ago

as untog mentioned, since Azure came on the scene, a whole bunch of new languages and runtimes have been supported: java, python, php, node.js, hadoop, ... even linux. i'd say that from a visual studio perspective Python is the best oss/non-msft language that's currently supported.

profquail2• 13 years ago

Microsoft has also contributed Hyper-V drivers to FreeBSD 10, presumably to allow FreeBSD servers to run on Azure:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=38019

dagw• 13 years ago

Python is one of the few open source languages that offered decent first class support for windows from very early on. Its windows api bindings and official windows installer has always been miles ahead of for example Perl, PHP or Ruby. This led to a lot of windows devs (both inside and outside of MS) looking for a good cross platform language to flock to Python.

primelens• 13 years ago

I've been amazed at how compelling a platform IPython - especially the notebook format - has become. On the R front, RStudio also seems to be getting better quite rapidly.

RodericDay• 13 years ago

agreed. it's insanely good, I wish I had it when I was doing my B.Eng.

vgoklani• 13 years ago

$100k ??? really, is that a joke?

that's basically half of one senior developers salary, and in exchange they get positive press + support for their platform.

jlarocco• 13 years ago

It's $100k more than they had to give and almost certainly more than you've contributed...

tekknik2• 13 years ago

$100k goes a long way when most developers are expecting to do the work for free.

takluyver• 13 years ago

And salaries in academia aren't all that high. I'm one of the lucky people being paid to work on IPython (from another grant), and while I'm not a senior developer, $100k would cover my salary for well over a year.

fperez_org4• 13 years ago

a) it's $100k we didn't have, and which we greatly appreciate. We have a 'donate' button on the site, but that's basically a few dollars a day, more or less. It will pay for pizza for a sprint every few months, and that's about it.

b) we've supported Windows for years, money or not. The core team isn't made of Windows experts, so our support may not be always ideal, but we always test on Windows, have Windows CI running, and always release Windows installers. Windows is widely used and we want the experience there to be as solid as possible. The money was a donation, no strings attached (under US law it can't have strings attached, since it's a donation to a 501c3).

vvvVVVvvv• 13 years ago

Props to you lads for the hard work. Don't let the naysayers drag you down.

code_duck• 13 years ago

What sort of budget would you allocate towards ipytion development?

teh_klev• 13 years ago

For anyone who's interested, Scott Hanselman recently interviewed one of the Python tools team, well worth a listen:

http://www.hanselminutes.com/384/python-tools-for-visual-stu...

Microsoft Corporation sponsors IPython

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