Friday afternoon geek out: Boo

Coding
#1

In the spirit of the season, I was wondering if anybody had taken a serious look at Boo, which is basically a python-like language that runs on the .Net framework. Unlike IronPython, Boo is (a) statically typed and (b) precompiled rather than run in an interpreter – although you can also run it in an interpreter for testing and rapid development.

I must say I find the idea of a python-like language that’s distributable in .exe form and includes all the .Net base class libraries is very tempting. However it’s also a small open source project without a huge user community. I’m waaaay to busy to spend serious time on it right now, but if anybody else has played with it I’d like to hear if it should go on the To-do list or if it’s just a curiosity…

Thoughts?

#2

I think Jason Parks used it for Unity stuff.

My feeling when I looked at it a while ago is- most of why I like Python has less to do with the syntax and more to do with its flexibility. Static typing and .NET’s security model is inherently less flexible (with lots of other benefits, obviously). I’d say it’s an interesting project, and as long as it compiles into .NET assemblies even if you abandon the language you can still interop with it fine.

#3

Boo sounds great in theory, but it annoyed the heck outta me in Unity. It’s close enough to Python, which is cool, but the devil is in the detail. You type your Python code the way you’re used to but then something really small - usually how variables are handled (and the syntax) - is of course different. So I spent a lot of time in the docs and the Unity forums. I’m not a C# wizard, but when I switched to C# my progress was much faster. Maintainability is also a problem - anyone who’s not a Boo programmer will be hindered by the same problems.
It’s a shame. I tried to like Boo because it’s so like Python, but it just didn’t work out for me.

At work it’s not an option either. There’s C#, C++ and Python guys in our team, so why bother with Boo?

#4

Pretty much what i’ve been thinking. But my hatred for curly brackets will not let me rest…