---
title: "State of alternative languages on the CLR?"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/7/state-of-alternative-languages-on-the-clr.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/7/state-of-alternative-languages-on-the-clr.html"
published: "2004-05-07T21:40:00"
updated: "2004-05-07T21:40:00"
tags: [".Net Quotations"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "James points to an interesting question: Staffan asks: All these languages (Smalltalk, Python, etc) are pretty far from being strongly-typed imperative languages, so it seems that it is indeed possible to use more…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# State of alternative languages on the CLR?

By Roy Osherove May 7, 2004 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

**Historical article** · Originally published May 7, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

[James points](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3261153607) to an interesting question:

[_Staffan_](http://blog.tomtebo.org/PermaLink.aspx?guid=dfc52c0f-9623-4f2e-8d72-5d581bb35919) _asks:_

_All these languages (Smalltalk, Python, etc) are pretty far from being strongly-typed imperative languages, so it seems that it is indeed possible to use more dynamic languages on the .Net platform. Indeed,_ [_Jim Hugunin_](http://hugunin.net/)_, the author of IronPython (and_ [_Jython_](http://www.jython.org/)_, the Python-on-JVM implementation) notes that while his initial intention was to write an article titled "Why .NET is a terrible platform for dynamic languages", he ended up with the conclusion that the CLR is indeed a good platform for dynamic languages. My question is: Is anyone using these languages on the .Net platform in real projects? I'd be very interested to hear any success stories._

_Any Answers?_

I've personally have never used any of the alternative languages in .Net. Only VB,C# and C++. I did take the time to check out the Perl.net implementation (or was it the Smalltalk.Net implementation?) but didn't get too far on it. It would be interesting to see if anyone actually has done some real world work with these .net dynamic languages. Well? Any answers?

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---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/