As tbray mentioned, Sun hired “The JRuby Guys” today (rather, announced that they had).
We were discussing the announcement in #redmonk (you were there, right? If not, check it out), and most folks seemed quite happy with it.
I, of course, think it’s great.
Personally, it gives me a thrill to when coders who’ve worked passionately on a project get a patron or otherwise “win.”
Professionally, I’m on record as saying that JEE (and, really, all of Java) needs to become the multi-language platform for long-term survival:
Abstracting away the OS was the early dream, but the missing feature to all of that was limiting the platform to Java only. The dynamic language JSRs are key to realizing this broader platform play. As such, the next bet for Java EE’s long-term survival is for the Java EE community to make running dynamic languages and frameworks like PHP, Rails, JavaScript, and python work as well, and even better, in Java EE as they do in Linux.
Now, while it’s too soon to read in that much into the hire of two dudes — Sun still hasn’t monetized Roller despite frequent prodding from us, esp. from James — it’s certainly a welcomed milestone.
Questions, etc.
Several things to think about are:
- Once JavaScript is wrapped into the JDK, will Ruby be next? I’d hope the answer was yes.
- If that’s true, what will this mean for the Java coders out there in the “normal” shops? The rock-stars are already coding in nirvana, but it’s the unlucky and Bodhisattva code-monkies I’m concerned about. Will the legions of corporate coders out there figure out how to get JavaScript and Ruby into their projects? Clearly, Sun could help out here. If Effective Java had an entry on using dynamic languages, there would be no worrying. (I realize that’s something of an ironic example since BLoch no longer works at Sun.)
- What kind of support can we expect to see in NetBeans (and, through competitive innovation, Eclipse)? I’ve long wanted to see command completion and refactorings for dynamic languages in IDEs. Thankfully, it looks like this problem is on the right short-list.
- Building on the IDE point, becoming the Ruby IDE could be a major event for NetBeans. As most of you, dear readers know, we rarely miss a chance to question the division between Eclipse and NetBeans; becoming a Ruby IDE would throw a new angle, in Sun’s favor, into that discussion.
Brew-hah-ha
One thing’s for sure, we can expect some exciting brew-hah-ha as JavaScript, Ruby, and other dynamic languages get closer to JEE and “corporate programming.” We’ve seen that pattern in the past, and just as in the maturing of Agile, there’s always a tedious tension to go through as a school of thought goes mainstream. The Cool Kids hate it when Wal-Mart starts selling replicas their clothes.
I, of course, think that’s all distraction. If it compiles, and users like it: Ship It!
Disclaimer: Sun and Eclipse are clients.
Tags: jruby, sunw, ruby, javascript, dynamiclanguages, java
Cote,
Have you checked out RDT and RadRails? Lots of innovation already going on for Ruby and Ruby on Rails tools.
Ian
Great post… I do have a couple of questions:
>> Once JavaScript is wrapped into the JDK, will Ruby be next?
– What exactly does this mean in your mind? I don't typically associate JavaScript and Ruby in a way that makes this statement make sense to me.
– Second…but I can see that Ian beat me to it…RadRails seems to have Eclipse well on it's way for Ruby.
Ian, and on RDT for Lunt: to be honest, I haven't gotten my hands dirty with RDT yet. I've just heard about it. But that hearing has been positive. If I'd have dredged the Ruby IDE part of my mind better, I would have put a link to it. As always, it seems like the Eclipse community is expansive. With that declaration of clean hands aside, I am more interested in a general ruby IDE vs. rails. I realize rails is to hot-stuff now-a-days, but I think long-term, there's even more value in ruby that it currently has. And, though I used to be a black-and-green emacs nerd, I'm not a firm believer in the need for an IDE to keep an language afloat. All that said, I clearly need to play around with RDT before making more proclamations along these lines ;>
Lunt: to me "wrapped in the JDK" means that if I was using JDK/JRE X (6, 7, or whatever), I could code in Java, JavaScript, or Ruby. I'm looking for the Java to become a platform in the same sense that Linux is a application development platform, and expanding out the languages that exist in that platform by default gives Java an advantage. That is, instead of dumping Java for ruby, for example, you'd still just use Java as your platform.
Of course, that's a sort of grand-vision. There could be more point/nice uses of dynamic languages in the Java world. JSPs with their ELs are a great example in existence right now. (I realize I'm jumbling up Java and part of JEE, but when doesn't that happen in the real world?) I've heard that programming servlets in dynamic languages is great compared to Java, and I suspect much of UI development would bee much better done in a dynamic language rather than straight Java.
If that doesn't clear it up, I can write a more detailed post on the topic ;>
Thanks for the reply. That definitely answers my question, but I'll have to chew on the idea of running Ruby code with the JRE.