On Sep 2, 2007, at 12:07 PM, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:

> John Joyce wrote:
>> JRuby's main problem: you still need to know Java to use Ruby!
>
> Well, we're hoping to solve that too; jrubyc already provides a  
> mechanism for compiling to class files, and generally of the class  
> files are just in the "right places" in your load path they'll load  
> fine. For example:
>
> ~/NetBeansProjects/jruby $ jrubyc test/foo.rb
> Compiling file "test/foo.rb" as class "test.foo"
> ~/NetBeansProjects/jruby $ rm test/foo.rb
> ~/NetBeansProjects/jruby $ jruby -I. -e "require 'test/foo'"
> hello from compiled Ruby
>
> So there's no need for you to worry yourself about classpaths and  
> jar files and whatnot. Simply lay the compiled versions in the same  
> directory structure as the uncompiled versions, point load paths to  
> the appropriate roots, and you're off.
>
> We'll also look into providing Ruby-friendly packaging logic,  
> probably through Java-specific Rake tasks, once the compiler is  
> 100% complete.
>
> - Charlie
>
That sounds very cool.
A real Ruby interface to Java!
I do want to learn Java at some point though, just because there is a  
wealth of stuff there.