xRuby

Ruby is a great programming language, very easy to learn and extremely powerful. I've been using it the last three months and I can say that I tend to forget Java. I was always a big fun of Sun's OO language and thought of it as irreplaceable. But this period I am very close to reconsider. The only thing that was holding me back was that it is a not bytecode interpreted language (although I would be very happy to sacrifice running time for the extreme ease ruby can offer) OK... at least for some things, I would never build the core of a complex system in ruby not even Java, it is ridiculous. Anyway, as I was browsing today I've seen a project going on called xRuby. To my surprise I realized that some guys are building a ruby to java bytecode compiler, this is awesome! From what I've read they claim faster speeds than the ruby interpreter and it also seems that they can compile the ruby tests. I need to try this, I am going to give it a try when I find some time. This is a great project and I wish it continues, you can check it out at http://xruby.blogspot.com/