> I think .NET is a fantastic platform, and I'm still surprised there's not more attempts at building languages on top of it, especially when you consider how I

> I think .NET is a fantastic platform, and I'm still surprised there's not more attempts at building languages on top of it, especially when you consider how IronPython was built to "prove" .NET was a terrible platform, but the Jython developer fell in love with .NET as a result of his attempt, heck, Microsoft hired the developer! At least thats how I've heard the story told on random HN comments over the years. It is often joked that .NET doesn't feel like it needs that many languages because C# can be so very good, and the JVM has so many languages because Java is, uh, well Java. IronPython was indeed pretty great and some of the tools it inspired are still in .NET (and in C#). The thing that mostly "killed" IronPython was the same thing that disrupted most of the Python ecosystem: Python 3. Maintaining a second interpreter for a language requires a lot of work to keep up with the primary interpreter, and Python definitely had one of those fun hurdles that caused a lot of updates. Around that point is also when F# arrived and while F# was intended to be an IronPython killer, either, it fills a similar gap sometimes. (Certainly for me F# replaced a lot of what I was using IronPython for at the time, and even today.) Many of the other alternative languages I've used in .NET were eventually replaced simply because C# continued to improve, including it's abilities to run in a REPL and to be a miniature scripting language for quick scripting needs. The joke I started with comes from a place of some truth, too. Also, PowerShell I use a lot, and it is weird to not think of it as a common .NET language in the wild, but it definitely is technically exactly that.