This year marks a big milestone in my history working on JRuby: twenty years ago, I joined Sun Microsystems to work on the project full-time. This month also marks another milestone for JRuby: two years being independently funded by my company Headius Enterprises through commercial support contracts. It’s a perfect time for us to return to RubyConf 2026 and show today’s Rubyists what JRuby can do for them!

Main JRuby Talk

My goal with JRuby has always been to give Rubyists more tools and more opportunities. By combining JRuby with the power and ecosystem of the JVM, we’ve brought Ruby and Rails to places it never could have gone before. We’ve made it easy to integrate JVM libraries, deploy on existing Java infrastructure (including embedded and Android devices), and handle enormous applications that the standard runtime simply isn’t suited for.

This talk will provide a whirlwind 30-minute tour through JRuby’s history and design, showing several amazing use cases you might never imagine you could do with Ruby. Here’s the talk abstract:

JRuby is an implementation of Ruby 4.0 built on the Java Virtual Machine. For the past 20 years we’ve expanded the horizons of Ruby, bringing more jobs and more opportunities to Rubyists like you:

• High-scale applications needing shared-memory parallelism and big data
• Enterprise organizations with existing Java infrastructure * Cross-platform, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) application packaging that protects your code
• Graphics-intensive applications including desktop, games, and visualization
• Mobile and embedded solutions using Android And you can do it all in Ruby, with no Java experience required! This talk will review JRuby’s history and show you what’s possible when you bring the best of Ruby and the JVM together.

The main JRuby talk is scheduled for Tuesday at 3:30PM.

JRubyKaraoke! 🎤❤️

On Tuesday Night, it’s time to sing! We are looking into options for a karaoke night with Ruby friends.

I’ve published a quick JRuby at RubyConf 2026 form to gauge interest. Please join us… it’s a Ruby tradition and I’d love to meet you and hang out!

JRuby Hack Space

On Tuesday, the JRuby and Headius teams will manage a Hack Space table at the RubyConf 2026 Community Day!

Got more questions about JRuby? Have an application that needs the scaling, ecosystem, and performance that JRuby provides?Think you might like to contribute to the JRuby project?

We’ll be hanging out to answer your questions and help onboard you to the JRuby world. This is my favorite part of conferences: meeting people and helping them solve technical challenges!

Use the JRuby at RubyConf 2026 form to provide any information you think might help us support you.

JRuby Cabana

On Thursday, the Headius team would like to host you at our poolside cabana at the Red Rock Casino Resort, host of RubyConf 2026! We’ll be hanging out in the shade… talking, hacking, and relaxing between sessions.

Let us know on the JRuby at RubyConf 2026 form if you’re interested in dropping by!

Join the discussion on r/ruby!

JRuby at RubyConf 2026
byu/headius inruby

Keep the Hits Coming

This is a call to action!

My blog posts, conference talks, and open-source work are all sponsored by Headius Enterprises, offering software support and development services for JVM and JRuby users. Our experts have decades of experience building and optimizing complex JVM applications and managing open-source projects.

If you are interested in scaling to new heights, deploying your applications in large enterprises, or taking advantage of the JVM’s world-class JIT compilers, battle-tested libraries, and leading-edge AI tools, let us help you.

Sign up for expert support from Headius Enterprises!

If you find my content or my work on JRuby to be interesting and useful, you can also sponsor me directly on GitHub. Your contributions help ensure the posts keep coming and the JRuby project keeps moving forward!

Sponsor Charles Oliver Nutter on GitHub!