Microsoft Corporation sponsors IPython(ipython.org)
ipython.org
Microsoft Corporation sponsors IPython
http://ipython.org/microsoft-donation-2013.html
9 comments
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.
the donation comes w no strings attached & they can spend it any way they want.
The work @smortaz and the PTVS team have done with IPython over the years is awesome, and we're really very thankful for this!
Of course. MS supports Python in Azure, too... they seem to be embracing Python in general into the Microsoft ecosystem.
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.
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.
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...
This is all true. There were early ODBC drivers and COM wrappers for Python, too, back in this time period.
You can build Django apps in Visual Studio now. The end is nigh.
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.
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.
I'm not exactly going to say that Visual Studio is heaven on Earth, but I can also say that I haven't seen unresponsive alert bubbles or HRESULT-based crashes since maybe 2005, and possibly the first version of VS.NET. I think you're being a little bit unfair here.
I agree. While I'm totally Visual Studio free now (since I don't like running VM on OS X), I haven't seen this type of instability in a LONG time.
While I definitely won't be using Visual Studio for web development (it just doesn't feel right to me), I wouldn't say Visual Studio is an awful product that should be avoided. Compared to VS 2005 (remember those days?), VS 2012 is far faster and much less of a pain to use. For anyone starting out with web development who has used VS before, it would probably work fine and suit their needs.
That is, unless your projects are giant. Then you might start running into a bit of unresponsiveness, but nothing worse than Sublime Text or comparable editors.
That is, unless your projects are giant. Then you might start running into a bit of unresponsiveness, but nothing worse than Sublime Text or comparable editors.
I do have giant projects (which is what I'm referring to) unfortunately.
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.
Seems like a good sign.
That's good news. I wonder if this will lead to convergence in the Linux and Windows ecosystems? Generalized graphical frameworks and whatnot?
> 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."
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."
If they were embracing Python, they would replace PowerShell with Python. :)
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. :)
Every time you have to add a new component to a system to run your tools, a system administrator gets his wings.
PS is built in, Python isn't, so Python can't be used to 'bootstrap' anything from the ground up in Windows. If you're going to have to bootstrap in PS, why not just stick with it?
PS is built in, Python isn't, so Python can't be used to 'bootstrap' anything from the ground up in Windows. If you're going to have to bootstrap in PS, why not just stick with it?
Because Windows is going away. Python experience is portable. Your tools have a chance of having some use after your last Windows box is turned off.
Windows on the desktop is going away? Pretty sure it will be around for many many years to come. I say this as a primarily mac household.
That said, yes, Python is a portable skill.
That said, yes, Python is a portable skill.
But python tools are not (by default) portable when they deal specifically with OS stuff. The paradigms are too different - you have to spend considerable amounts of time doing 'if os==linux:elif os==windows' if you want portability for that kind of thing.
And to say 'windows is going away' is hilarious - maybe in the Valley, but def. not in big orgs.
And to say 'windows is going away' is hilarious - maybe in the Valley, but def. not in big orgs.
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 ?
UPDATE: I've just noticed a new IronPython release after more than a year! Is that a sign of things to come ?
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.
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.
agreed. it's insanely good, I wish I had it when I was doing my B.Eng.
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...
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.
They also support node.js, from what I recall. And you can use PHP on Azure.
From what I hear, Node is getting a lot of love (all things considered) at Microsoft and especially at Azure.
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.
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.
And especially Drupal.
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.
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
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=38019
I've heard some bad reviews from a friend on the network performance of the FreeBSD/Hyper-V network drivers. But slow support is way better than no support.
Do you know if they've tested the drivers recently? Apparently it's been possible to run FreeBSD on Hyper-V for a while now; these drivers are fairly new (they were only committed to the FreeBSD source tree a few months ago), so if your friend is interested in using FreeBSD on Azure, you might ask him/her to try testing again using FreeBSD 10-ALPHA4 or newer. If they do try again and get the same results, post something in the thread I linked above with details so someone can look into it (either the Microsoft dev or a FreeBSD kernel dev).
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.
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...
http://www.hanselminutes.com/384/python-tools-for-visual-stu...
I suppose MS is using IPython internaly.
Always a conspiracy on HN when it involves Microsoft, eh?
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...
The grant supposedly comes from Microsoft Research Connections. They give grants all the time to projects (usually at universities), I've (as a MSR researcher) even been involved in a one before with KAIST concerning a JavaScript related topic. Interest alignment is quite flexible.
Note that this is a donation, not a grant. The legal terms are completely different.
Thanks for the clarification. Note that I'm a researcher, not a lawyer! We participate in relationships that involve money going from us to others, the nature of which I'm not very clear about but the right people are. I'll be careful about my terminology in the future.
I'm also a researcher, but I've had to learn how these things work :) When you accept funds for a grant, that's a contract between the funding agency and typically your employer (UC Berkeley in my case), not you as a person. It's a contract to deliver the outcomes that you specified in your proposal.
A donation is just that, a donation: no strings attached, it is made in support of recipient's work and mission, but without any specific task in mind. Just like when you donate to your local public radio, you can't say "I want these funds to pay only for such and such program I like".
A donation is just that, a donation: no strings attached, it is made in support of recipient's work and mission, but without any specific task in mind. Just like when you donate to your local public radio, you can't say "I want these funds to pay only for such and such program I like".
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Well come on, who uses python internally and doesn't use ipython?
I use bpython, personally.
$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.
that's basically half of one senior developers salary, and in exchange they get positive press + support for their platform.
It's $100k more than they had to give and almost certainly more than you've contributed...
$100k goes a long way when most developers are expecting to do the work for free.
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.
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).
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).
Props to you lads for the hard work.
Don't let the naysayers drag you down.
What sort of budget would you allocate towards ipytion development?
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.