From: Rich Morin <rdm@...>
Date: 2006-09-11T13:23:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Sun hires JRuby developers.

At 12:52 PM +0900 9/11/06, James Moore wrote:
> Adding a JVM layer means you can interface to Java libraries,
> sure, but how important is that?

There are a large number of interesting (IMHO) frameworks that
have been written in Java.  Here are two examples:

  The Pentaho Business Intelligence Platform
  http://www.pentaho.org/

  The Protege Ontology Editor and Knowledge Acquisition System
  http://protege.stanford.edu/

Both of these are written in Java, which I have no interest in
learning.  The ability to interact with and/or extend these
frameworks from Ruby is very much on my wish list.


> Most of the time things provide interfaces in C, and Ruby
> will accumulate ways of using those.

Even discounting the work involved in setting it up, I doubt
that any C wrapper will provide a seamless connection between
Java and Ruby.  Why not talk "directly" between these OO-based
languages?

> Seems like a time-limited problem here that
> would lock Ruby into a Java-centric world.

No more than, say, Parrot and Cardinal would lock Ruby into a
Perl or Python-centric world.  Basically, the name of the game
is seamless connectivity.  If JRuby allows me to work in Ruby,
while accessing libraries developed in other languages, more
power to it!

-r
-- 
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
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