The Ruby programming language has exploded in popularity, spurred in part by the agility of the Rails web framework. Rails has in turn changed the way we look at web development. The two together are forcing developers to rethink how applications should be written. The world is changing.
JRuby aims to bring Ruby to Java developers and provide an alternative platform for Ruby developers. In this interview the JRuby team talk about their experience in building JRuby on top of the Java virtual machine. Can JRuby compile to Java code, will it be used for domain languages and many more questions are fired by our JavaPolis interviewer Ted Neward.
Thomas Enebo is project manager and a developer of the open source project JRuby. He is a developer at the University of Minnesota and a consultant with Aandtech Inc. Tom has been using Java in some fashion since its first public beta release. He became interested in Ruby after seeing an elegant re-implementation of some Perl code. Tom joined the JRuby project some time in late 2002.
Charles Nutter has been a Java developer since 1996, recently working as the senior Java architect at Ventera Corp and in September moved to Sun to work full-time on JRuby! He led the open-source LiteStep project in the late 90s and came to Ruby in the fall of 2004. Since then he has been a member of the JRuby team, helping to make it a true alternative Ruby platform. Charles presented JRuby at RubyConf 2005 and co-presented at JavaOne 2006 with Thomas Enebo. He hopes to co-write a JRuby book this fall with Thomas to follow up a planned JRuby 1.0 release. Charles currently works on a Ventera contract for the USDAs Food and Nutrition Service at their office in Minneapolis.
Taming Code Dependencies— During this session we'll talk about code dependencies between classes and packages in large scale software projects: what they are, and why they're important,
The Java Puzzlers— Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter present yet another installment in the continuing saga of Java Puzzlers, consisting of eight more programming puzzles for your entertainment and enlightenment.
Java - A tour of the landscape— During this JavaPolis '07 keynote, James Gosling (father of Java) presents The State of the Java Universe. Java SE and JavaFX receive special attention during this keynote, where the first ideas towards a possible FX Designer tool gets presented.
Java SE Update— During this JavaPolis presentation, Danny Coward (platform lead for Java SE) gives a broad (not necessarily deep) picture of the work Sun Microsystems is doing in and around the Java SE platform and on JavaFX.
Interview with James Gosling at JavaPolis'07— During this JavaPolis '07 interview, the JavaPosse interviews James Gosling and talk about detailed features of the Java language, but also other programming languages like C, C++ and Fortran all in relation to the Java Virtual Machine. Enjoy!
