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Rubinius is Ruby in Ruby

After nearly 4 years of development, the Rubinius Project finally hit a proper 1.0 release earlier this month. Rubinius is an alternative Ruby implementation that is now fully compatible with Ruby 1.8.7 (MRI). While not the only alternative implementation, it's distinguished by the fact that the bytecode compiler is written in pure Ruby (the virtual machine itself is written in C++). Most of the core library is written in Ruby as well, which is pretty neat, and clearly inspired by the self-hosting nature of Lisp compilers. It also presents a perfect opportunity for Rubyists to dig in and learn about how their runtime platform actually works. As of 1.0, you can now run both Rails 2.3.x and 3.x on Rubinius as well as Sinatra and a host of other Ruby web frameworks and toolkits (including any Gem that is written in pure Ruby without native bindings). Like it's cousin JRuby, it features a JIT compiler and also includes a generational garbage collector. In terms of overall performance, Rubinius is making constant improvements. It runs Ruby code very fast, but since much of the core library is written in Ruby rather than C (as it is in MRI), certain benchmarks may run markedly slower. The team continues to improve the JIT, which will result in performance increases as it evolves. They're also actively engaged with the community and contributions are always encouraged. Over 200 developers have participated in the development of the project, led by Evan Phoenix of Engine Yard (interview at InfoQ). Along the way, Rubinius has not only morphed itself into a capable Ruby runtime but has also contributed to other aspects of the Ruby ecosystem, such as introducing the RubySpec executable specification for testing compatibility of different Ruby implementations -- which has since been embraced by MRI, YARV, JRuby, IronRuby, and MagLev. Want to test your own application out on Rubinius? The easiest way to is by using the Ruby Version Manager (RVM), a tool that makes it easy to install and manage a number of different Ruby implementations and versions, as well as Gem sets, on a single machine. Nomadicoder has written a simple set of instructions for getting Rubinius up and running quickly with RVM. Of course, if you want to dive right into the source, it's available on GitHub. And since the majority of Rubinius is written in Ruby itself, it shouldn't be a stretch for the average Ruby developer to grok the code, which of course is the whole point of the affair. If you want to understand how your favorite language is actually implemented, and how dynamic languages can be fast, this is a great place to learn more, especially now that the project itself is a very capable feature-complete runtime. - Open Source

Improving the Development Process

It's just as important to have good development processes as it is a good system architecture - Tools

ABC GNU/Linux

Live, installable Linux distribution that communicates between clusters of computers so that they can work in parallel - Open Source

Intel, Nokia Open Source MeeGo OS

The next step in merging Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin - Open Source

CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses: Part 16

CUDA 3.0 provides expanded capabilities - Parallel

Examining Wolfram Workbench 2.0

An easier way to create powerful Mathematica applications - Tools

About Open Source Stewardship

It's the end of the year, and, as is my wont, I've been thinking a fair bit about the things I'm thankful for in work and in life. One of those things, that has positively affected my work dramatically over the last 10 years, is the role of community in programming. In particular, the tireless work of talented, unpaid OSS project maintainers. The folks who generalize solutions to benefit all of us, who listen to our complaints, who fix bugs, apply our patches, manage releases, and all the other good stuff that comes with responsible code parenting.

So there I am, feeling all warm and fuzzy and thankful, tweeting my thanks to the good people who make my life easier. And then Jeff Atwood, one of my favorite bloggers, goes and harshes my vibe. On Wednesday Atwood wrote a piece for Coding Horror about the responsibilities of Open Source project parents. Using John Gruber, creator of Markdown, as an example, he basically says that Gruber, after giving birth to a coddled and universally loved baby, has pretty much stunted baby Markdown's growth through poor documentation and not listening to its community, resulting in a a number of messy forks and general confusion about where things might or might not be going.

Oh, the drama! Now, I'm not really up on my Markdown project history (frankly I prefer Textile for humane markup, but I'm weird like that), so I can neither refute nor confirm his claims. But it's a well-written article and certainly what his article did do for me was get me thinking further about what makes a great bit of OSS code into a  sustainable, thriving OSS community project.

- Open Source

Mobile Web Apps: Where Are We Now?

Awhile back I wrote an article for CodeTalk called Web Apps As First Class Citizens in which I advocated use of tools like PhoneGap to build web-based multi-use iPhone and Android applications instead of the richer but client-specific native toolkits (where appropriate).

Well, it's been almost a year since I wrote that, and native applications still rule the roost in both the iPhone and Android camps. And it doesn't look like the situation is going to change any time in the near future, either. But that's not to say that we're entirely without hope that mobile web apps will one day stand shoulder to shoulder with their native counterparts! 

- Design

Professional Ubuntu Mobile Development Book Review

As the move toward mobile computing continues to progress at an ever-accelerating rate, platforms that began life on the desktop are crossing the chasm to more personal portable designs.  Does this book successfully orient desktop developers to this new horizon?  Read on to find out.
- Mobile

The Future of Ruby Library Distribution: The Gemcutter Interview

When GitHub phased out Ruby Gem building a few weeks ago, they recommended the Gemcutter project as a replacement Gem host for folks who weren't already using the default source, RubyForge. The big news earlier this week is that the RubyForge and RubyGems teams are also getting behind Gemcutter, which will become the default gem host for the entire Ruby community (as rubygems.org).

To shed a little more light on the nature of these changes and what they mean for the future of Ruby package distribution, I sat down with Nick Quaranto , the original creator and maintainer of Gemcutter.

- Design

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