JRuby

Charles Nutter and the JRuby team continue to improve JRuby at a frantic pace. It is fast and they place massive importance on keeping their ecosystem up-to-date, including DB adapters, gem management, and modern Rails deployment. Rails 3 + JRuby is an awesome platform. There really is no reason to not be using Ruby, one of our favorite languages, in the enterprise.

Functional languages have a wide range of practical uses, including simulation, computational fi nance, computational science, large scale data processing and parsing. These fields benefit from functional programming techniques that simplify concurrent execution and the expression of complex mathematical functions concisely. Functional programming requires a shift in thinking for enterprise developers experienced in object oriented development. Moving to an often terse syntax for solving complex problems may initially be intimidating to many. As with all forms of programming languages, syntax is just one aspect of the language itself. In functional programming another significant aspect is the use of common idioms. These idioms speed code comprehension and increase overall maintainability. This might not be news to all, but it is worth noting that dynamic languages are long ready for adoption and trial. Ruby, particularly when deployed on JRuby, is ready for adoption. Thoughtworks uses Ruby and JRuby extensively in both its Services and Product work. Groovy is ready for trial and could prove more accessible than Ruby/JRuby in a Java shop. For the right type of applications, Ruby, JRuby, and Groovy prove far more effective, expressive, and productive than Java and C#.