Can you really use the Visual Studio 2008 IDE to code in Python?

Question

I have a friend who I am trying to teach how to program. He comes from a very basic PHP background, and for some reason is ANTI C#, I guess because some of his PHP circles condemn anything that comes from Microsoft.

Anyways - I've told him its possible to use either Ruby or Python with the VS2008 IDE, because I've read somewhere that this is possible.

But I was wondering. Is it really that practical, can you do EVERYTHING with Python in VS2008 that you can do with C# or VB.net.

I guess without starting a debate... I want to know if you're a developer using VS IDE with a language other than VB.net or C#, then please leave an answer with your experience.

If you are (like me) either a VB.net or C# developer, please don't post speculative or subjective answers. This is a serious question, and I don't want it being closed as subjective. ...

Thank you very much.

update

So far we've established that IronPython is the right tool for the job.

Now how practical is it really?

Mono for example runs C# code in Linux, but... ever tried to use it? Not practical at all, lots of code refactoring needs to take place, no support for .net v3.5, etc...

Answer 1

If you want to use Python together with the .NET Common Language Runtime, then you want one of:

• Python.NET (extension to vanilla Python that adds .NET support)
• IronPython (re-implementation of Python as a .NET language)
• Boo (Python-like language that compiles down to C#-equivalent MSIL code)

Using Python in Visual Studio without using the CLR seems like a bit of a waste to me. Eclipse with PyDev would be a much better choice.