title: Creating an interactive shell for .NET apps and embed scripting languages like python/iron python into it
body: <p>I was learning python using the tutorial that comes with the standard python installation. One of the benefits that the author states about python is "maybe you’ve written a program that could use an extension language, and you don’t want to design and implement a whole new language for your application" - My question is how would i go about designing a program (using c#) that can be extended using Python interactively(for this to be possible, i would imagine that i would need to create some sort of a "shell" or "interactive" mode for the .net program) ?</p>
  
  <p>Are there any pointers on how to design .NET programs that have an interactive shell. I would then like to use python script in the shell to "extend" or interact with the program.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> This question partly stems from the demo give by Miguel de Icaza during PDC 2008 where he showed the interactive csharp command prompt, C# 4.0 i think also has this "compiler as a service" feature. I looked at that and thought how cool would it be to design a windows or web program in .NET that had a interactive shell.. and a scripting language like python could be used to extend the features provided by the program.</p>
  
  <p>Also, i started thinking about this kind of functionality after reading one of Steve Yegge's essays where he talks about systems that live forever.</p>