How are you using IronPython?
- by Will Dean
I'm keen to drink some modern dynamic language koolaid, so I've believed all the stuff on Michael Foord's blog and podcasts, I've bought his book (and read some of it), and I added an embedded IPy runtime to a large existing app a year or so ago (though that was for someone else and I didn't really use it myself).
Now I need to do some fairly simple code generation stuff, where I'm going to call a few methods on a few .net objects (custom, C#-authored objects), create a few strings, write some files, etc.
The experience of trying this leaves me feeling like the little boy who thinks he's the only one who can see that The Emperor has no clothes on. If you're using IronPython, I'd really appreciate knowing how you deal with the following aspects of it:
Code editing - do you use the .NET framework without Intellisense?
Refactoring - I know a load of 'refactoring' is about working around language-related busywork, so if Python is sufficiently lightweight then we won't need that, But things like renames seem to me to be essential to iteratively developing quality code regardless of language.
Crippling startup time - One of the things which is supposed to be good about interpreted languages is the lack of compile time leading to fast interactive development. Unfortunately I can compile a C# application and launch it quicker than IPy can start up.
Interactive hacking - the IPy console/repl is supposed to be good for this, but I haven't found a good way to take the code you've interactively arrived at and persist it into a file - cut and paste from the console is fairly miserable. And the console seems to hold references to .NET assemblies you've imported, so you have to quit it and restart it if you're working on the C# stuff as well. Hacking on C# in something like LinqPad seems a much faster and easier way to try things out (and has proper Intellisense). Do you use the console?
Debugging - what's the story here? I know someone on the IPy team is working on a command-line hobby-project, but let's just say I'm not immediately attracted to a command line debugger. I don't really need a debugger from little Python scripts, but I would if I were to use IPy for scripting unit tests, for example.
Unit testing - I can see that dynamic languages could be great for this, but is there any IDE test-runner integration (like for Resharper, etc). The Foord book has a chapter about this, which I'll admit I have not yet read properly, but it does seem to involve driving a console-mode test-runner from the command prompt, which feels to be an enormous step back from using an integrated test runner like TestDriven.net or Resharper.
I really want to believe in this stuff, so I am still working on the assumption that I've missed something. I would really like to know how other people are dealing with IPy, particularly if they're doing it in a way which doesn't feel like we've just lost 15 years'-worth of tool development.
