Question

We have a number of electronic test technicians with next to no programming experience. I would like a scripting language that is easy to learn with simple forgiving syntax that can integrate with .NET and invoke exposed static or singleton instance methods easily. What scripting language can meet these requirements?

Note: Perl is eliminated, C# script would be nice but the syntax is a bit unforgiving.

Edit: I’d like to be able to do something like this.

Instrument("MultiMeter1").Measure
if (LastMeasurement.IsInRange(50,100))
{
   Test.Pass = true;
}

Answer 1

The short list includes

• PowerShell
• IronRuby
• IronPython
• Boo

PowerShell has a number of things going for it, not the least being that it will be installed on all Win2008 and Win7 installations.

The syntax isn’t totally forgiving, but PowerShell will do what it can to convert types as required, in addition it has a powerfull dynamic type system that helps make sense of XML, COM, AD, and WMI types.

Here’s just a few lines on type conversion

> $five = "5"
> $five + 5
55
> [int]$five + 5
10
> [datetime] "Nov 12"
Thursday, November 12, 2009 12:00:00 AM

Edit: to address your situation, you might create a cmdlet (or module in v2) which wrapped your .net classes and then do something like

$meter = Get-Measurement MultiMeter1
if ($meter.IsInRange(50,100))
{   
   Set-TestResult $meter $true
}