So Sam Gentile, the man who wants to single-handly banish VB.NET from the face of the Earth, has decided to tackle Python. Bully for him, I say and I have to give him credit for doing it for the right reason. But I hope that Sam's efforts go towards Iron Pyhton rather than than ActiveState's port.
Why? Pretty simple really -- I really want to see a F/OSS-friendly language really succeed on the CLR.
What the Mono folks are doing really impresses the heck of out me, but frankly, I've never been a big fan of C#. While I'd love to write Perl targeting the CLR, I can't afford what ActiveState wants to sell you to make the best experience. So for me, Iron Python is the best of both worlds. F/OSS and "Free." Maybe if folks like Sam start putting some more heat under it, it really could become a serious (and friendly) tool for getting the CLR word out to the F/OSS community. That's seems like a step in a good direction to me.
For the record, I'm targeting Java as my "Language to (re-)Learn" in 2005.