Professional IronPython

obTAININg ASP.NET dyNAmIC lANguAgE SuPPoRT
Microsoft built ASP.NET with extensibility in mind, but the native support tends to focus more on 
static languages such as Visual Basic.NET and C#, rather than dynamic languages such as IronPython. 
The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) is an add-on for ASP.NET that makes it possible to use lan-
guages, such as IronPython, that make typing decisions at run time, rather than compile time. You 
must download and install this support before you can use IronPython to create a Web application. 
The following sections describe DLR in more detail.
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Obtaining ASP.NET Dynamic Language Support
 
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dlR limitations
The DLR is currently a work in progress. The overall feel is of an alpha product that shows promise, 
but still has more than a few warts. In addition, the product currently lacks these features (in order 
of their importance to you as a developer):
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IntelliSense: Most developers depend on IntelliSense to provide clues as to what works and 
what doesn’t — in essence, what to write next. Without IntelliSense support, most developers 
find themselves peaking at the documentation and spending hours being frustrated with the 
development environment. Because a default relies so heavily on IntelliSense during the entire 
development process, its lack is keenly felt. Let’s hope that Microsoft will choose to add this 
feature sooner rather than later.
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Limited designer support: If you worked through the examples in Chapter 8, you probably 
have a good idea of why designer support is so important. Sure, you can create a perfectly 
usable interface without a designer, but doing so becomes time consuming and many devel-
opers give up before they get their user interface completely right. The better the designer 
support, the faster you can work.
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