IronPython and IronRuby CTPs for .NET 4.0 Beta 2

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock (or maybe just aren’t tracking developments in the .NET community outside of IronPython), Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 this week. Of course for me personally, the most important feature in Visual Studio 2010 is C# 4.0 new dynamic type (also available in Visual Basic, but since VB already supported some level of late binding it’s not exactly “new” to VB).

For those of you who want to experiment with this cool new feature, may I present IronPython 2.6 CTP for .NET 4.0 Beta 2. If you can’t think of any cool things to try with this new feature, the VB team blog has some scenarios to get your started.

Also available: IronRuby CTP for .NET 4.0 Beta 2 if you’re more into gemstones than snakes.

These are preview releases, which means they’ve gone thru basic testing. If you find any bugs, PLEASE report them via the usual channel. I wrote in my Post 2.6 Roadmap post, “we are committed to shipping the RTM of our .NET 4.0 version the day that Visual Studio 2010 is publicly available” but that means shaking out the bugs between now and then. We need your help so we’re ready to go by Visual Studio 2010 launch – March 22, 2010 as per Soma’s blog.

BTW, Alcides Fonseca suggested we call this release “IronPython 2.6 N4” since it’s designed to run on .NET Framework 4.0. I like that. What do you think?