We need diversity in the JVM Languages group, and it's been brought to my attention that some popular/key/interesting languages may not have representation. So we need to change that.
If you are interested in the future of non-Java languages on the JVM, you should be on this list. Yes, we...

The facts:
Sun and many other organizations have started considering moves to Mercurial. In Sun's case, it's a mandate for all Sun-managed OSS projects (OpenSolaris, OpenJDK, etc).Moving projects to Mercurial frequently (usually?) requires IDE/tool support.Sun's IDE/tools and those of many other organizations are Java-based (NetBeans, Eclipse, and so on).Mercurial is...

Someone pointed out to me the other day that the Alioth "Compuer Language Benchmarks Game" (as they call it now) had started to include JRuby 1.0 in the results. And how do we fare? We're slower than Ruby 1.8.6! Hooray!
But not by much. Depending on your definition of "on...

Can it be true? Of course it can!
Graeme Rocher blogs about a new feature in upcoming Groovy 1.1 beta 3: support for Ruby-style "method missing" hooks!...

John Rose, lead of the "invokedynamic" effort (Java Specification Request 292), has posted some exciting articles about the future of the JVM and a number of changes potentially for the next Java version. Among these is, of course, the dynamic invocation efforts, but these entries include information on non-local returns...

Compilers are hard. But not so hard as people would have you believe.
I've committed an update that installs a CallAdapter for every compiled call site. CallAdapter is basically a small object that stores the following:method namemethod indexcall type (normal, functional, variable)As well as providing overloaded call() implementations for 1,...

One of the most attractive aspects of Ruby is the fact that it has relatively few sacred keywords. In most cases, things you'd expect to be keywords are actually methods, and you can wrap or hook their behavior and create amazing potential.
One perfect example of this is require. Because...

In JRuby, we have a number of things we "decorate" the Java stack with for Ruby execution purposes. Put simply, we pass a bunch of extra context on the call stack for most method calls. At its most descriptive, making a method call passes the following along:
a ThreadContext object,...

I must apologize to my readers. I have been remiss in my blogging duties. I will be posting updates on the various events of the past month or so along with updates on JRuby progress and future events very soon. But for now, a technical divergence after a night of...

Rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated!
I've been mostly MIA the past couple weeks, largely due to the Ruby Kaigi and related events in Tokyo and a short family trip this past week to Lake Michigan's eastern shore (warm sandy beaches and a much-welcomed rest). But I figured I'd...

We have finally released JRuby 1.0, based on the last release candidate, RC3. And what more is there to say? Not really a whole lot...It's almost entirely RC3, with one or two minor fixes added in. But it's really turned out to be an outstanding release, and already reports are...

I'm not up for creative titles tonight. Hopefully you'll see this in your feed reader and click for a second opinion. Granted, I agree with Ola's IronRuby post on most points, but I disagree on a few key items. So let's dive in, shall we?
You managed to blog this...

Tom posted the announcements already, but JRuby 1.0.0RC3 is out in the wild! This release is our most important yet, because we intend for this release to become JRuby 1.0. The only things that will change from now until a 1.0 final release later this week would be any showstopping...

One thing often touted as a missing feature in Ruby is the lack of a constructor form that initializes fields. A few other languages have this feature, including for example Groovy, another JVM dynamic language. The general idea is that if you want to construct an object and initialize a...

I love how meta-programmable Ruby is.
JRuby doesn't support annotations because Ruby doesn't support annotations. So what! We can extend Ruby to add something like annotations:class JPABeandef self.inherited(clazz) @@annotations = {}enddef self.anno(annotation) @@last_annotation = annotationend...

I've started a Google Group for all those interested in the future of alternative languages (i.e. not Java) on the JVM. A number of you knew this was coming, and I've already invited folks that expressed an interest in my RedMonk Unconference session at JavaOne. The rest of you are...

I've been invited to this year's Foo Camp. Since it sounds like a great time and there's a bunch of other folks going I'd like to talk to, I'm accepting the invitation. My purpose posting this entry is to let other campers know I'll be there and try to hook...

We're within weeks of a final JRuby 1.0. We've pared down the bugs that we think we can or must fix for 1.0 and this email is a summary of the ones we need help with. So whatever time you can spare, please have a look and help resolve these.<br...

I just came across this amusing entry from an old, now-defunct blog of mine on LiveJournal.
The last line pretty much says it all. I must have been really frustrated with my job at the time:Someone should pay me to sit at home and do great things.(If you don't get...

Today Tom and I met with fellow language implementers Oti Humbel, Charlie Groves, and Tobias Ivarsson to start discussions about JSR-292 (invokedynamic) with John Rose, longtime VM implementer and new spec lead. It was an excellent discussion, with John listening patiently to the implementation challenges we've had on JRuby and...