I am delighted to be at the Houston .NET Users Group this week to talk about Ruby for .NET programmers.
This will be a mostly code, almost no powerpoint presentation.
If you plan to visit, I look forward to seeing you on Thursday (June 8th, 2006) evening.
Here is the abstract:
Object-oriented scripting languages, or agile dynamic languages, as some like to call
those, are gaining
programmers' attention. Ruby is gaining popularity and acceptance due to it expressive
power. The language
is light and simple. The dynamic nature allows you to express some constructs that
are generally harder
in so called strongly typed languages (C++, Java, C#) must easier in Ruby. In fact,
Microsoft is actively
working some of the Ruby features into future versions of C#, and is keen on making
the CLR support
dynamic typing. Learning Ruby is critical even if you don't intend to use it directly.
It helps you stay ahead.
We will take an example driven approach to look at interesting features and strengths
of Ruby, and also
discuss some of the weaknesses as well. We will also take a look at Ruby .NET bridge
and discuss some of
the .NET specific dynamic language initiatives.
