# Why IronRuby?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/170492>\
**Category:** IronRuby\
**Created:** [June 18, 2009, 5:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/170492 "2009-06-18T05:40:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/metanoize)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 5:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/170492/1 "2009-06-18T05:40:21Z")

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I have been having fun playing around with IronRuby but one question  
keeps coming to my mind which is Why IronRuby? What purpose does it  
serve?

I know we can use the simplicity of the IronRuby language to call .NET  
API’s. This means we have two powers combined but will the IronRuby  
interoperability with .NET get faster since currently it is extremely  
slow.

I need feedback from more experienced developers that what will IronRuby  
bring to the table of development?

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**Author:** ![metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/metanoize)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 9:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/170492/2 "2009-06-18T09:51:34Z")

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We use IronRuby to provide user scripting and light weight plugins for  
our  
C# applications.  
Cheers,  
– Henon

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**Author:** ![metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@metanoize](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/metanoize)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2009, 10:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/170492/3 "2009-06-18T10:12:10Z")

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way faster delivery times. For example it takes me only a fraction of  
the  
time to build some fairly complex things in Ruby than it would take me  
to  
build in C#. For example I wouldn’t have been able to build a mocker  
that  
resembles the design I’ve got in Caricature now in under 2 weeks with a  
language like C#. Neither is it as doable in C# to build something like  
ironnails which took me about 3-4 weeks to build in IronRuby.

The performance hit mostly occurs at startup time after that IronRuby is  
fine IMO. Most applications I make wouldn’t be benefitting from a fast  
language because most of them consume webservices/databases/read files  
and  
those are where most of the delays come from

If it’s a fat client app like winforms I guess it would even matter less  
because you generally don’t have to deal with many concurrent calls as  
you  
have to do with some server architectures. If you really need the extra  
performance you can go for a language like C# or something.

Extensibility of existing applications would be a big one too.  
Metaprogramming some bits and pieces of your application etc…

* * *

Met vriendelijke groeten - Best regards - Salutations  
Ivan Porto C.  
Blog: [http://flanders.co.nz](http://flanders.co.nz)  
Twitter: [http://twitter.com/casualjim](http://twitter.com/casualjim)  
Author of IronRuby in Action ([http://manning.com/carrero](http://manning.com/carrero))

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Meinrad R.