Java News Brief (JNB): JRuby
This month's Java News Brief (JNB) features Mark Volkmann introducing JRuby the up-and-coming dynamic language for the JVM.
Mark Volkmann: Ahh Ruby... If you didn't already have at least a small interest in Ruby you probably wouldn't be reading this article. What's so interesting about Ruby? Well the people in the know tell us that Ruby is special because ...
- it's object-oriented
- it's dynamically typed, supporting "duck typing"
- it has a compact, yet easy to read syntax
- it features blocks that are closures
- classes and objects are open, which means that methods can be added
- it's the language of the Rails web app. framework
Past Mark Volkmann JNB articles include
- Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG)
- Groovy - Scripting for Java (during the original Groovy boom)
- REST Architectural Style
JDK 1.6.0_01 Is Here. Are You Still Stuck In Java 4?
Sun just released jdk1.6.0_01. See the Release Notes.
I will update my personal development boxes to it. But for my current project, I'll continue using Java 4.
Are you on one of those projects where you are using Java 4 and see no sign that it will be upgraded soon? (By soon, I mean within the next 18 months.)
For a while earlier in the year, I heard something like "Java 5 will be allowed." And then reality hit with "Yeah, you can use the Java 5 JVM but you should not use any of the Java 5 language features."
Oh, well.