Who you are and what are you doing here ?
When will JRuby 1.0 be released and what will be the support for Rails ?
What's the status on the first JRuby book ?
How hard is it to build a dynamic language on top of a JVM ?
When do I use JRuby Vs Java ?
Have we landed in language hell ?
Were you involved with JSR-223 ?
Is JSR-223 feature complete ?
Can JRuby compile to Java code ?
Could you sacrifice some flexibility of JRuby to improve performance ?
Will JRuby be used for domain specific language's ?
Should Java get more features from dynamic languages ?
Can Java handle a few more features ?
Is JRuby getting closer to Smalltalk or Lisp ?
Where do I go if I want to learn JRuby ?
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.