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  • Twitter, an Evolving Architecture

    Evan Weaver, Lead Engineer in the Services Team at Twitter, who’s primarily job is optimization and scalability, talked about Twitter’s architecture and especially the optimizations performed over the last year to improve the web site during QCon London 2009.

  • Ruby VM Roundup: IronRuby 1.0 Coming Up, RubySpec, JRuby 1.3.1

    IronRuby's alive and kicking - and will go 1.0 in July. We look at some resources to get up to speed with IronRuby's status. Also: JRuby 1.3.1 is an important bug fix update for JRuby users, MacRuby continues to improve and MagLev now comes with a native parser.

  • JRuby Roundup: JRuby 1.3 Released, ruby2java, JSR 292 Progress

    JRuby 1.3 is now available, bringing performance improvements and compatibility with Google AppEngine. Work on other improvements is continuing and a first version of the ruby2java compiler is now available. Also: InvokeDynamic support is making it's way into the builds for the next Java version.

  • Sun Clarifies on the G1 Garbage Collector Licensing Controversy

    A couple of days ago InfoQ posted an article about the fact that the release notes for G1 in the latest Java update, mandated that it was to be used in production only by organizations with a Sun support contract. Following the debate and the reactions that where raised in the community, Sun has explicitly updated the release notes and has removed the controversial clause.

  • OpenJDK 7 / JDK 7 Milestone 3 Released

    A new milestone of the next generation JDK has been released, which includes several new features and enhancements in many functional areas, like garbage collection, NIO and more. This is also the first version where OpenJDK and JDK will have (almost) identical code-bases.

  • Is Sun offering the new G1 Garbage Collector Only with a Paid Support Contract?

    Sun's Garbage First garbage collector (nicknamed G1) has been released with Java Update 1.6.0_14 (6u14). Although this low pause, server style collector has been long awaited by the developer's community, at this point Sun allows production usage only to paying customers and this has raised concerns.

  • Squeak Smalltalk and Seaside come to the iPhone

    Squeak Smalltalk is the latest language to be supported on the iPhone platform. We talked to John M McIntosh who ported Squeak to the iPhone and also released software built with Squeak (and its cleaned up version Pharo) in the AppStore. The applications make use of Squeak, but also use the Seaside web framework for building GUIs.

  • Engine Yard Has Taken Over Ruby 1.8.6 Maintenance

    Engine Yard has taken over the maintenance of Ruby 1.8.6. We talked to its new maintainer Kirk Haines to find out what they have planned for the future.

  • Rich Hickey on Clojure's Features and Implementation

    In this interview from QCon London 2009, Rich Hickey talks about Clojure. The discussion includes the ideas behind Clojure's STM support, what other concurrency primitives Clojure supports and which ones might get added in the future. Other topics covered are Clojure's AOT support, the role and implementation of multimethods, Clojure ports to other systems and much more.

  • Performance Roundup: Heap Stacks Boost Threads in 1.8.x, MacRuby AOT, ZenProfile and EventHooks

    New patches by Joe Damato improve the efficiency of Ruby 1.8.x's green threads with heap stacks: instead of copying the entire stack at every context switch, the patches actually switch between different stacks. Ryan Davis released zenprofile and event_hook for efficient profiling. Also: work on a MacRuby Ahead of Time compiler using LLVM has started.

  • Ruby VM Roundup: Nokogiri and Nailgun on JRuby, Ruby 1.9.1p129, MagLev Update

    JRuby 1.3 will allow to reduce startup times in some situations using Nailgun. Nokogiri, a popular XML library, now runs on the latest JRuby thanks to ruby-ffi. Finally: Ruby 1.9.1-p129 is a new release that fixes a few bugs and security issues.

  • CrossTwine Linker Aims to Boost MRI and 1.9.1 Performance

    CrossTwine aims to improve the performance of MRI, 1.9.1, and Python. Unlike new Ruby VMs, the CrossTwine Linker allows to improve efficiency of the existing interpreters and VMs, while keeping their complete feature set. The company plans to offer services to use the CrossTwine Linker technology to speed up specific applications.

  • Implementation Roundup: Ruby 1.8.x update, JRuby on .NET, MacRuby and MagLev Progress

    New versions of Ruby 1.8.6 and 1.8.7 are available now. JRuby development moves ahead with experiments with running JRuby on IKVM. Also: MacRuby continues performance work and MagLev now runs RubyGems.

  • The Future of ParseTree

    The current Ruby 1.9.1 doesn't have the required features to allow ParseTree's runtime features to work - which means some libraries that depend on those features won't work. Examples are Merb's action arguments or heckle. We take a look at the state of ParseTree - and how ruby_parser is a possible way out.

  • Ruby On... SAP: One More Step In The Enterprise With A New Ruby VM

    SAP, the market share leader in CRM & ERP and second largest business software company is adopting Ruby as part of their SAP NetWeaver and SAP ERP 6.0 solution. ABAP Virtual Machine will be able to run Ruby Code through the Blue Ruby extension. With recent debates on Ruby VMs, we talked with Juergen Schmerder from SAP and Charles Nutter from Sun (JRuby).

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