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I am truly glad to see that Sun is backing JRuby, enough to hire the two main guys.

I have been asking Sun to do this for quite awhile now, and it is great that Tim Bray was able to push it though.

It is such an obvious move.

Pro's

• Sun gets two engineers
• Java can hope to be the platform rather than the language
• Ruby is slow (in comparison). Ruby on the JVM can be fast, and can offer us great tools.
• The only investment is in a couple of guys!!!!

Con's

• You have to pay a couple of guys + other resources
• Some can moan that you are distracted

I remember being at a Microsoft event a few years ago, and a bunch of their engineers were chatting a lot about dynamic languages on their platform, and things that they could do to make it easier for us to implement. Then their hired Jim.

It is also great to see Thomas Enebo being part of this. I worked with Thomas back when I was in college, and he is a fantastic guy.

Good luck to you Thomas, and likewise to you Charles.

I look forward to powering JRuby on Rails in the future (and maybe light up the Ruby movement to move on a bit faster too).