Programming languages must be implemented in Java or C, everybody knows this. Sure, a prototype in Ruby, but that would be unusable. After all, Ruby is made for web development, right? Hard tasks, like implementing a compiler, have to happen in far more manly languages. But wait, the Rubinius compiler is written completely in Ruby, and it seems to get pretty decent performance, maybe we can use that.
This video explores the possibilities of using the Rubinius compiler tool chain to implement a programming language targeting the Rubinius VM. We get all the hard work that went into Rubinius for free and can do the heavy lifting in Ruby. Reak, a Smalltalk implementation running on Rubinius, will be used as an example.
Video Producer: The Golden Gate Ruby Conference