In this podcast, Peter Mounce talks about using Ruby rake to aid with automating .NET software builds – stating that a build script should use a scripting language, because XML hurts too much. Peter walked through the basics of what rake allows one to do; tasks, file-tasks, and dependencies. He demonstrates a build script leveraging the rake-dotnet gem and convention over configuration, where tasks do the heavy lifting so you don’t have to.
http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/open-source-dot-net/rakedot-net

As you may know, Microsoft is developing IronPython and IronRuby, .NET implementations of the popular open-source programming languages Python and Ruby. While it’s clear that Microsoft wants to attract existing Python and Ruby developers to .NET, the role of IronPython and IronRuby for existing .NET developers is less clear. What value is there for a .NET developer in learning IronPython? What are the tradeoffs between IronRuby and a more traditional .NET language like C# or VB? Harry Pierson, new PM for IronPython, will discuss where dynamic languages fit in the.NET …