At any one time there always seems to be a number of conferences coming up or taking place. These conferences are an excellent way to interact with members of the JRuby community. However not everyone can make it to every single conference. Fortunately sites like Confreaks, SlideShare, and Lanyard have made it easy to access pre-recorded conference videos, slides, and other materials. This post is meant to introduce some highlight videos and materials from recent conferences where JRuby presentations were held.
But First, JRubyConf Is Coming!
As was announced on Twitter, JRubyConf 2012 will be taking place in Minneapolis, Minnesota from May 21st - 23rd. The JRuby team has some great things planned, so be sure to keep your eyes on the @JRubyConf account for more updates.
StarTech Conf
Building Languages for the JVM
It used to be that Java was the main language to interface with the JVM. This has changed with languages such as Clojure, Scala, and Groovy stepping up to provide alternative ways to utilize the platform. What exactly goes into making a language for it? JRuby Guy Charles Nutter takes a look at the challenges for implementing a language using JRuby as a case study. Slides for the presentation are available on slideshare.
Ruby Midwest
Recommendation Engines using Machine Learning, and JRuby
Wonder how a site like NetFlix recommends movies to users? Matt Kirk discusses how such recommendation engines work and how to implement one in JRuby. PDF Slides are available from the author’s website.
High Performance Ruby: Threading versus Evented
While not specific to JRuby, Dr. Nic takes a look at the often debated topic of threaded versus evented when dealing with high performance Ruby. In particular JRuby is mentioned for how it handles the threaded concurrency issue. Slides are available on Slideshare for viewing (there’s also a PDF download link). There’s also a recorded video of a previous version of the talk from Windy City Rails.
Ruby Conference
Be a Minecraft modman with Purugin
Minecraft is a game that has gained an immense following. Users explore worlds and construct things along the way. However, there are a unique set of users who like to tinker around with the game and create mods for it. These users are known as modman, or so JRuby team member Thomas Enebo has decided to call them. This talk discusses Purugin, a framework that uses JRuby to allow for creating Minecraft plugins using Ruby syntax. A video of the talk is available at Confreaks.
JRuby: Polyglot Heaven
With languages such as Scala, Clojure, and Groovy setting a new trend for languages on the JVM, projects utilizing multiple languages are not a rare site. This talk by JRuby team members Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo takes a look at how JRuby can be used to interact with other JVM languages. A video of the talk is available at Confreaks.
JRuby and Big Data
Jeremy Hinegardner presents different ways that JRuby can work with big data. The talk discusses interfacing with big data solutions such as Apache Hadoop, HDFS, Avro, and more. A video of the talk can be found on Confreaks and Youtube.
Update Added RubyConf Brazil Talks. Thanks to @qmx on twitter for the heads up!
RubyConf Brazil
JRUBY ON STEROIDS
Technology is constantly improving, and the JVM is no exception. JRuby contributor Douglas Campos takes a look at Java7’s improvements for dynamic languages, and how JRuby benefits from them. HTML Slides can be found on the author’s website. A video recording in Brazilian Portuguese can be found at eventials.
TORQUEBOX - CROSSING THE CHASM BETWEEN JAVA AND RUBY
Scale is always a hot topic in the web development world. However you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to achieve it. TorqueBox contributor Bruno Oliveira looks at how Rails/Sinatra/Rack applications can be combined with JVM technologies to provide scalable applications. Slides can be found at slideshare. A video recording in Brazilian Portuguese can be found at eventials.