31/01/2010 19:27:33

Most of the applications that we and our partners work on are highly customized
for a very specific purpose with point-and-click end users in mind, but some of the
applications are designed only to control and configure hardware devices.

The highly customized applications usually integrate our hardware as part of a much
larger system. The focus of those applications is not the hardware.

The focus of the other applications is really the hardware itself.
Those applications simply try to expose all of the hardware’s functionality
with just enough abstraction so that the end users (most likely technicians, engineers or
others with detailed knowledge about the hardware) can consume it easily.

Consider the software to control our LED panels. It allows the user
to configure the LED hardware’s parameters, perform diagnostics and
put various components on the screen as a means to “demo” it to potential customers.

This software is not on our highest priority list, so it doesn’t really get special features
or new additions unless the hardware changes.

However, on more than one occasion we’ve had customers asking:
”Hey it’s great you can control the hardware like that, and we like the designer you
provided, but some of our engineers would like the ability to do some of those things
by using code.” and we’ve had situations where potential customers want to see more
then the static demo where you just add some text, pictures, etc… to the screen.

Now with IronPython we can solve both problems in one go. By embedding IronPython
into our application the end user can manipulate the objects we expose directly.
The customer wants to see the latest tweets on an LED panel or perhaps a simulation
of traffic information on an LED panel? No problem!

A screenshot of the initial version of our IronPython powered DSL.
(Completely outdated, but more on that in my next blog entry)

I’m going to post more information on how to embed IronPython in .NET applications
very soon. If you’re an IronRuby fan, don’t worry the same concepts apply.