JRuby Cookbook - Short Review

First a disclaimer, I’m not a heavy Ruby or Java guy. Most of my coding for the last couple of years has been perl and shell - because I write little things that I need right now and those two languages excel at that (CPAN is still THE decision clincher).

I recently became involved in a side project that is written in Ruby and Java though and in an excellent timing coincidence a friend returned my previously unread copy of the JRuby Cookbook. The book isn’t an introduction to either Java or Ruby (there are already excellent online and dead tree resources for that) but it shows where the two can meet and how to get started at those points. It’s not really a book to read back to front but it is a good approach for a cookbook.

If you’re curious as to how dynamic languages on static language VMs can complement each other this is a good book to flick through. Score - 6/10

• it’s not the book for me right now but it does show a lot of entry points I’ll probably come back to later.