Thursday, September 7, 2006

JRuby Steps Into the Sun

It's going to be a big news day for JRuby :)

The two core JRuby developers, myself and Thomas Enebo, will become employees at Sun Microsystems this month. Our charge? You guessed it...we're being hired to work on JRuby full-time.

Perhaps some of you may have seen this one coming. For others, it may be a pleasant surprise.

The primary goal is to give JRuby the attention it really needs. The potential for Ruby on the JVM has not escaped notice at Sun, and so we'll be focusing on making JRuby as complete, performant, and solid as possible. We'll then proceed on to help build out broader tool support for Ruby, answering calls by many in the industry for a "better" or "smarter" Ruby development experience. I'm also making it a personal priority to continue growing the JRuby community, foster greater cooperation between the Java and Ruby worlds, and work toward a "whole-platform" Ruby-on-JVM strategy for Sun.

And yes, JRuby will remain as open source as it is today. It just might start moving a bit faster (as if it weren't moving fast already!)

You can imagine how excited I am about this opportunity, and how pleased I am to know that Sun takes Ruby so seriously. Not only will I get to work on the project I've poured my heart into this past year, but I'll be able to do it while helping one of my favorite companies turn a technological corner. Naturally I've been talking with a myriad of folks at Sun over the past several weeks, so believe me when I say these guys really get it. The tide has turned and dynamic languages are on everyone's agenda. It's going to be quite a ride.

Thanks very much to Tim Bray, who has proven a fearless advocate for Ruby and dynamic languages at Sun. Thanks also to Gilad Bracha, Neal Gafter, James Gosling, Peter von der Ahé, and others fighting to improve Java and make the Java platform a dynlang-friendly place. Thanks also to my Sun interviewers for their excellent, thoughtful questions and ideas about the future of JRuby and dynlangs on the JVM. I'm looking forward to working with you all.

And finally, thanks to all you who use, contribute to, and blog about JRuby. You're a huge part of this, and I want you all to join us on this great Ruby adventure. Community involvement has gotten JRuby where it is today, and community involvement is vital to making Ruby on the JVM a reality.

Updates: I'll list substantive news items and blog postings as they come in (and I'll let your RSS aggregators deliver the one-liner posts ;)

Tim Bray: JRuby Love - Tim lays out some informative FAQs on the Sun move. He was our biggest Sun advocate, so he should know.

InfoQ: Sun Officially Back Ruby, Brings JRuby In-House - Includes a link to the newly-posted presentation we taped for InfoQ this past spring.

Thomas Enebo: JRuby Shines in Sun - My co-conspirator's almost-as-cleverly-named post about the event.

Bloglines Aggregation of JRuby articles - The blogosphere is very busy today!

InternetNews.com: JRuby Developers Join the Sun Fold - Andy Patrizio talks to Tim Bray and I about what this means for JRuby and for Sun.

InfoWorld: Sun picks up a gem in JRuby - Mostly a blog wrap-up, but a few good links and quotes.

26 comments:

  1. This is great news! Congratulations to you (and to us). Together with the scripting integration in Spring, this might become something really really important.

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  2. That is fantastic, Charles! Seems like a great time to be alive for Ruby lovers.

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  3. Contratulations! This is great news for the Java platform.

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  4. This is truly outstanding you guys. Congratulations!

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  5. Wow, that's great! Congratulations!

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  6. This is great. Thanks for all your hard work on jruby. And congrats for this opportunity. Ruby is definitely on the rise.

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  7. Congratulations! You had hinted at a change on your blog a while back and then hadn't said anything since. This is just what I'd been hoping for. Fantastic! Sun just did a very smart thing.

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  8. Congratulations, this is great news.

    I have been considering moving towards JRuby for some of my scripting needs. This makes my decision all the more easier.

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  9. Congratulations!
    I have been a [mostly] silent reader of the Ruby Talk list, and you're one of my favourite posters. I wish you well on the new job.

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  10. Congratulations on your new job! Kathy Sierra in blog post today talked about career advancement not in terms of whether you're moving vertically up some corporate hierarchy, but whether the interesection between what you're doing and what you *want* to do is growing. So any way you cut it, this looks like a great career move!

    See you in Denver.

    -John

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  11. congrats! have fun at Sun.

    dalibor topic

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  12. Fantastic! Hope to meet you at RailsConf Europe.

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  13. Congratulations Charles, this is great news on so many levels.

    I think this will also help to attract more developers to contribute to the JRuby project.

    For me, this is the last kick I needed to really take a look at Ruby; I'm even tempted to see if there's any low hanging fruit in a tactical effort to improve performacne.

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  14. Great news! This should reduce the FUD factor in using JRuby for projects. Couple this with Bruce Tate's endorsement in "From Java to Ruby" and I think the JRuby train will really start moving now.

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  15. Congrats Charles! BTW, nice job on your demo at MinneDemo on Tuesday night too. Good stuff!

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  16. Congratulations!
    That was literally my dream job when I was active in JRuby back in 2002.

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  17. Congrats !!

    This is a really important action for the Java Community!

    Looking forward to welcome you JavaPolis 2006 :o)

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  18. A somewhat unrelated pro-NetBeans comment by someone from Sun? I'm shocked. Well, not really.

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  19. Congratulations! I'm wondering if this move by Sun is in direct response to the recent release of IronPython on CLR by the Jython guy working at Microsoft.

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  20. i think its a great news 4 all ruby n java developers fans.wishing all d best 4 lifting ruby n java platform together..

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  21. its a great news 4 all ruby n java progarmmer to take benifite of both platform at d same time..wish all d best 4 lifiting ruby language
    as a next generation progarmming lang as Jruby.

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  22. its a great news 4 all ruby n java progarmmer to take benifite of both platform at d same time..wish all d best 4 lifiting ruby language
    as a next generation progarmming lang as Jruby.

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  23. You say they "really get it" and you can help them turn a corner. Well, I love Java, but .. how are they going to make money? How are you going to help them make money?

    Dan

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  24. Congrats!!! I wish I worked there :)

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