JRuby, not just for hard-headed pragmatists anymore

JRuby bills itself as the pragmatic Ruby, the go-to implementation when you need to fit into the Java universe or support a ton of platforms. Who knew it was also a tool for having fun exploring the realms of computer science? Want to invent your own programming language? With libraries like BiteScript, you can begin on familiar Ruby ground and concentrate on the language, letting the JVM handle things like object allocation. Want to play with different concurrency models? With JRuby, you can connect to the ones from Clojure or Scala, or even dip into the source code and invent your own. In this talk, we'll discuss how JRuby can be your springboard into the joy of computing.