Dynamic Languages and Dynamic .NET for Silverlight

Abstract

One of the notable features of Silverlight is its support for dynamic languages. A dynamic language is interpreted at runtime, meaning it is possible to add new code while a program is executing. The dynamic language you are likely most familiar with is JScript. Silverlight has direct support for both JScript and Managed Jscript, which is JScript executing on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). Two other dynamic languages are supported: Ruby and Python (called IronRuby and IronPython in the Silverlight/.NET world). This integration capability enables the development of rich Internet applications (RIAs) using the Silverlight platform—XAML for the presentation layer and dynamic languages for the code-behind. This chapter will introduce these dynamic languages, discuss why the DLR is important in the Silverlight picture, and show how to go about using these languages.