Well, it was pretty lopsided, but there were some things that IPy was pretty good at. Exceptions are much more efficient, there were some bright spots in dictionary and string manipulation.<p>Given that CPython is about Python, whereas IronPython is about Python and the MS environment (libraries, IIS, MSSQL, etc.), it looks like a decent alternative if you like Python, or are just tired of C#.
At the day job, they run an all-MS-windows environment. So i use IronPython to write administration scripts for the database and to do some calculation or migrate datasets or things like that.<p>It is definitely slow, but I am willing to deal with that because Python as a language shines with such tasks.(or any dynamic language I guess)
Last time I tried IronPython (~ 2 months ago) it was painfully slow ... slower than Jython which is really discouraging since they've put some effort into this for quite some time now (also hiring Jim Hugunin, the lead Jython dev).