Friday, September 07, 2007

RubyConf 2007 => Ruby VM Smackdown

I just registered for RubyConf 2007, which will be held Nov. 2-4 in Charlotte, NC. If you want a more intimate, more hard-core Rubyist experience, than what RailsConf is turning into, RubyConf looks to be it.

There not being that many tickets available, you better register right now if you want to go. I registered without even looking at the agenda first... just filled out the registration form, and hoped it's was not too late.

Once I has nervously typed my credit card info, and gotten my email confirmation, I took a few breaths. and got around to checking out the schedule for the conference I had just committed to attending. I was not disappointed.

Lo and behold, the ultimate battle of the Ruby VM's will be taking place on Saturday, Nov. 3. Take a peek at what's in store:

9:00A - John Lam - State of IronRuby
10:00A - Charlie Nutter - JRuby: Ruby for the JVM
11:00A - Evan Phoenix - Rubinius 1.0

Wow! If you care at all about the future of Ruby as a language, not just as a vehicle for fevered dreams of Ruby on Rails-based world-domination, you can't help but get excited. The three ascendants to the throne of dynamic language glory, all duking it out in a back-to-back 3-hour frenzy. Yum!

Improving the language performance of Ruby is the big thing needed to push out all those other wanna-be next big languages into the dustbin of interesting languages that no one uses. I think Erlang is really neat, don't get me wrong, but one look at that syntax, and sugar is not what comes to mind!

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