I have a friend who I am trying to teach how to program. He comes from a very basic PHP background, and for some reason is ANTI C#, I guess because some of his PHP circles condemn anything that comes from Microsoft.
Anyways - I've told him its possible to use either Ruby or Python with the VS2008 IDE, because I've read somewhere that this is possible. 
But I was wondering. Is it really that practical, can you do EVERYTHING with Python in VS2008 that you can do with C# or VB.net. 
I guess without starting a debate... I want to know if you're a developer using VS IDE with a language other than VB.net or C#, then please leave an answer with your experience. 
If you are (like me) either a VB.net or C# developer, please don't post speculative or subjective answers. This is a serious question, and I don't want it being closed as subjective. ...
Thank you very much.
update
So far we've established that IronPython is the right tool for the job. 
Now how practical is it really?
Mono for example runs C# code in Linux, but... ever tried to use it? Not practical at all, lots of code refactoring needs to take place, no support for .net v3.5, etc...
Firstly, there seems to be a question as to whether python (or various implementations) are as 'powerful' as C#. I'm not quite sure what to take powerful to mean, but in my experience of both languages it will be somewhat easier and faster to write a given piece of code in python than in C#. C# is faster than cpython (although if speed is desired, the psyco python module is well worth a look).
Also I would object to your dismissal of Mono. Mono is great on Linux if you write an application for it from scratch. It is not really meant to be a compatibility layer between Windows and Linux (see Wine!), and if you treat it as such you will only be disappointed.
It just seems to me that you are taking the wrong approach. If you want to convince him that not everything Microsoft is evil, and he is adamant about not learning C#, get him to learn Python (or Ruby, or LUA or whatever) until he is competent, and then introduce him to C# and get him to make his own judgement - I'm fairly in favour of open source, and am far from a rabid Microsoft supporter, but I tried C#, and found I quite liked it.
I think that getting him to use python and visual studio in a suboptimal way will turn him against both of them - far from your desired goal!
Can you really use the Visual Studio 2008 IDE to code in Python?