# Why IronRuby? **URL:** \ **Category:** IronRuby\ **Created:** [January 26, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329 "2010-01-26T17:13:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/1 "2010-01-26T17:13:26Z")
Hi, I was thinking about why to use IronRuby and one of the things that came to my mind is because of better gems like spec, cucumber etc. Mostly my use of IronRuby is around unit testing .NET CLR frameworks. But then .NET CLR implementations is catching up with all these tools like specflow and (.NET implementation for cucumber not sure about the name). RAKE is awesome but usually I just use sh to execute shell scripts and perform the build. Currently, I am not interacting RAKE with .NET assemblies so it is pure Ruby implementation. So, what do you think? Where would you use IronRuby? ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/2 "2010-01-26T17:27:13Z")
I have been using it the last couple months for building out a Silverlight app and have found a lot less friction coding WPF with IronRuby as opposed to XAML and C#. Randall ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/3 "2010-01-26T17:40:41Z")
This question keeps coming back šŸ™‚ Testing is a great use of IronRuby, maybe even the top reason for .NET guys to use it. However, there are more reasons for .NET guys to adopt IronRuby like: - Writing internal tools. - Make it possible to extend .NET applications using IronRuby. - Using IronRubyā€™s REPL capabilities for quick POCs or to enhance current .NET applications. - Silverlight and Gestalt development - Writing DSLs - Running Ruby on Rails on IIS ā€œnativelyā€ (this one is not so much for the .NET developer, but itā€™s a great reason too šŸ™‚ ). All in all, it will be tremendously hard to convince C#/VB.Net guys to work with IronRuby. Moreover, itā€™ll be twice as hard until VS fully supports the language. Having said that, I do believe that as time goes by the walls will collapse and IronRuby will become a common tool among .NET devs. Shay. * * * Shay F. | .NET Technologies Expert | Author of IronRuby Unleashed | Sela Technology Center Blog: [http://IronShay.com](http://IronShay.com) | Twitter: [http://twitter.com/ironshay](http://twitter.com/ironshay) ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/4 "2010-01-26T17:51:30Z")
Amen to that šŸ˜ƒ ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/5 "2010-01-26T17:56:29Z")
A while back I really thought testing would be the largest use case, but it went differently - here are my current real use cases: - faster UI development (windows forms) - interop with solutions already built on Ruby (see my previous message on Resque) - Excel templating (things like embedding IR into spreadsheet, somehow) - Silverlight (games or apps) ā€“ Thibaut ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 5:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/6 "2010-01-26T17:58:15Z")
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Shay F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)wrote: > This question keeps coming back šŸ™‚ > > Testing is a great use of IronRuby, maybe even the top reason for .NET guys > to use it. However, there are more reasons for .NET guys to adopt IronRuby > like: I agree with that. :-/ > - Make it possible to extend .NET applications using IronRuby. This one is a big one. (Think emacs-lisp but using Ruby in any app.) > - Using IronRubyā€™s REPL capabilities for quick POCs or to enhance current > .NET applications. If things go the way they did for Michael F. with IronPython at Resolver Systems, those POCs may turn into real apps as developers realize that IronRuby is plenty fast for their scenario. I would further add that many Ruby libraries, or at least those that are written in pure Ruby, may prove better or more useful than similar libraries in C#. The same goes for IronPython. In particular, Iā€™m interested in MongoMapper for Ruby or Dee-python for data access. Writing some of these in C# is just a pain and are cost inefficient. Ryan R. Email: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) LinkedIn: [Ryan Riley - Quorum Software | LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley) Blog: [http://wizardsofsmart.net/](http://wizardsofsmart.net/) Twitter: @panesofglass Website: [http://panesofglass.org/](http://panesofglass.org/) ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/7 "2010-01-26T18:29:17Z")
The productivity increase vs programming in a language like C# is a big one too šŸ™‚ So why ironruby and not ruby? if youā€™re a .NET shop you probably already have a serious investment in libraries, control suites and so on. With IronRuby you donā€™t lose anything you can reuse those items but still get the productivity increase. As it so happens I tend to disagree that the rails stuff isnā€™t for .NET people What Iā€™m seeing is that Rails is the primary reason people look at IronRuby. For example Iā€™m currently doing a 40 day coaching job at a company that is evaluating [asp.net](http://asp.net) mvc and Rails. IMO and Iā€™m fairly confident I know whatā€™s in the [asp.net](http://asp.net) mvc framework, it still has a looooooooong way to go before it can get anywhere near what rails has to offer you. It would involve adding even more ruby/python features to C# (at some point they should then rename it to ironC or something). I have a chuckle every time I see a C# dev create a viewmodel or use stuff like: var myVariable = new MyGiantGeneric\(); When they say strong typed view, thatā€™s just plain funny because itā€™s correct but also wrong at the same time what they really mean to say is statically typed view, but anyways. It basically boils down to do you want to deal with this typing nonsense or do you want to deal with it more intelligently (at a performance cost). When this coaching job is over I do a 4 day training course at another company on: Ruby/Rails + .NET, RSpec and testing best practices (or what to test). So in my opinion there is a keen interest for something more mature to take over. As you may know Iā€™ve implemented ironruby mvc, because I assumed thatā€™s what .NET people would be interested in. There is 1 good use case for it if you have an existing [asp.net](http://asp.net) mvc app otherwise I donā€™t really see the point of using [asp.net](http://asp.net) mvc for example and having to deal with generics and all other CLR nonsense. - everything shay said. ## PS: If I get the the sqlserver stuff to work with ActiveRecord properly I definitely want to do a datamapper adapter so I donā€™t have to deal with ActiveRecord and its inconsistencies or actually writing sql 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 ([IronRuby in Action - Ivan Porto Carrero and Adam Burmister | Manning](http://manning.com/carrero)) ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/8 "2010-01-26T20:31:05Z")
Iā€™m currently using IronRuby to do automated UI testing using the WPF UI Automation framework. IronRuby is working out brilliantly, the WPF UI automation framework on the other hand is ā€œsub parā€, but thatā€™s another story. Have also used it for many ad-hoc tasks such as exploring .NET apiā€™s, transforming data files, connecting to SQL server to poke around, and so forth. ---
**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:** [January 26, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/9 "2010-01-26T18:02:57Z")
Along a lot of these ideas, I have written a small app which I use to file bugs on Codeplex. The source is at [GitHub - jredville/cp\_bugger: A repl for working with Codeplex bugs. Ā· GitHub](http://github.com/jredville/cp_bugger). I bring it up now because it fills some of these points: - ``` Internal: it's not internal since it is open source, but it is ``` a custom toom - ``` Extending .NET applications: I wrap the TFS api's to make them ``` more friendly and adjust the complexities of TFS to the relative simplicity of Codeplex. - ``` REPL: Used the repl a lot during the development of this. I ``` plan on adding a repl mode to this, and I might make IRB the base of that repl. - ``` SL: Not here ;) ``` - ``` DSLs: Yep, I made a command DSL that makes creating commands ``` relatively easy - ``` IIS: Not here :) ``` This app would have been possible via screen scraping or [Ruby.NET](http://Ruby.NET), but it was amazingly simple to build using IronRuby. Itā€™s also really useful, and has very little todo with testing. JD From: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)] On Behalf Of Shay F. Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 8:35 AM To: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] Why IronRuby? This question keeps coming back šŸ™‚ Testing is a great use of IronRuby, maybe even the top reason for .NET guys to use it. However, there are more reasons for .NET guys to adopt IronRuby like: - Writing internal tools. - Make it possible to extend .NET applications using IronRuby. - Using IronRubyā€™s REPL capabilities for quick POCs or to enhance current .NET applications. - Silverlight and Gestalt development - Writing DSLs - Running Ruby on Rails on IIS ā€œnativelyā€ (this one is not so much for the .NET developer, but itā€™s a great reason too šŸ™‚ ). All in all, it will be tremendously hard to convince C#/VB.Net guys to work with IronRuby. Moreover, itā€™ll be twice as hard until VS fully supports the language. Having said that, I do believe that as time goes by the walls will collapse and IronRuby will become a common tool among .NET devs. Shay. * * * Shay F. | .NET Technologies Expert | Author of IronRuby Unleashed | Sela Technology Center Blog: [http://IronShay.com](http://IronShay.com) | Twitter: [http://twitter.com/ironshay](http://twitter.com/ironshay) On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 6:13 PM, Mohammad A. \<[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\> wrote: Hi, I was thinking about why to use IronRuby and one of the things that came to my mind is because of better gems like spec, cucumber etc. Mostly my use of IronRuby is around unit testing .NET CLR frameworks. But then .NET CLR implementations is catching up with all these tools like specflow and (.NET implementation for cucumber not sure about the name). RAKE is awesome but usually I just use sh to execute shell scripts and perform the build. Currently, I am not interacting RAKE with .NET assemblies so it is pure Ruby implementation. ## So, what do you think? Where would you use IronRuby? Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**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:** [January 27, 2010, 8:11am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/10 "2010-01-27T08:11:53Z")
Thereā€™s nothing stopping you from using Blend to generate XAML, and loading it from IronRuby. The tutorial app in the IronRuby samples directory was built like that. Youā€™re right that AttachedProperties wonā€™t work today, but if you really want to use XAML and Ruby together, you can have guidelines for your designers on what blend features they can use, or have some way of converting what they write to Ruby. ~Jimmy From: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)] On Behalf Of Miguel Madero Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:08 PM To: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] Why IronRuby? Iā€™ve been willing to try it with Silverlight Apps, I know it has a lot of potential and Iā€™m thinking of IR as full replacement of C#. Binding doesnā€™t work for dynamic objects which is a big showstopper (although I know thereā€™re ways around it, Iā€™ve not had a chance to get aroudn that). I see a lot of application frameworks that would be better implemented on a real dynamic language. People is struggling to fix some C# limitations with weird things like TypeDescriptors, DynamicProxies, AOP, Code Generation, etc. However, the lack of support from tools like the Visual Studio Designer and Blend is another showstopper. Iā€™m happy to handcode my XAML or even add elements from ruby code, but for bigger proejects we might have a designer working in Blend, creating controls in XAML, probably even using Attached Properties, this are all things that wonā€™t work ATM with IronRuby so we have to fault back to a statically type language to define this. So we gain productivity in some areasb, but loose it in others, I guess for some apps we would end up with a mixed approach, but I would ike to use IR as the main language and C# for those thigns that I canā€™t do in IR and not the otherway around. ---
**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:** [January 27, 2010, 7:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/11 "2010-01-27T07:09:17Z")
Iā€™ve been willing to try it with Silverlight Apps, I know it has a lot of potential and Iā€™m thinking of IR as full replacement of C#. Binding doesnā€™t work for dynamic objects which is a big showstopper (although I know thereā€™re ways around it, Iā€™ve not had a chance to get aroudn that). I see a lot of application frameworks that would be better implemented on a real dynamic language. People is struggling to fix some C# limitations with weird things like TypeDescriptors, DynamicProxies, AOP, Code Generation, etc. However, the lack of support from tools like the Visual Studio Designer and Blend is another showstopper. Iā€™m happy to handcode my XAML or even add elements from ruby code, but for bigger proejects we might have a designer working in Blend, creating controls in XAML, probably even using Attached Properties, this are all things that wonā€™t work ATM with IronRuby so we have to fault back to a statically type language to define this. So we gain productivity in some areasb, but loose it in others, I guess for some apps we would end up with a mixed approach, but I would ike to use IR as the main language and C# for those thigns that I canā€™t do in IR and not the otherway around. ---
**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:** [January 28, 2010, 1:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/why-ironruby/182329/12 "2010-01-28T01:16:58Z")
Jimmy, I know I can consume XAML from Ruby, what doesnā€™t work is the other way around, create and set properties of Ruby objects from XAML About converting what they have to ruby, sounds like a tough task, they tend to generate the ugliest XAML, certainly something that can be automated, but thatā€™s not the issue. The problem is that we need to create some custom controls, converters, behaviors, attached properties, etc, in code and they wonā€™t be able to consume it from XAML so they woudl be limited to using ā€œassetsā€ created in C# (or we would have to create wrappers for our IR implementations). Now that I think about it, it might not be that hard to generate the wrappers for our IR objects, sounds simple at least for things like Converters where we only care about the interface. On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Jimmy S. \<