Image of R. Tyler Croy

R. Tyler Croy

R. Tyler Croy is a developer based in California, with 8 years of dynamica language experience under his belt. Nowadays he's mixing and matching between JVM-based langauges such as Groovy, Java, and Ruby to solve large-scale infrastructure challenges for Lookout, Inc. At Lookout, Tyler runs the team which supports tools and infrastructure for the rest of the engineering organization. One focus of his team is contributing to JRuby and its tooling, to make developers more effective and successful. Tyler is also the driving force behind many of Lookout's open-source contributions and their hackers blog, Outside of work, Tyler has been a long-time open-source contributor; you can find his contributions, under rtyler on GitHub.

“JRuby Gradle - Bringing Java Power Tools to Ruby”

One of the most useful aspects of JRuby is the ease at which one can integrate tools from the Java ecosystem. For developers building hybrid applications though, using Ruby tools like Bundler and Rake can result in unpleasant hacks. If you stick to classic Java tools like Maven, it can feel like writing Ruby with a straight-jacket on. This lack of mature tooling to support Java/Ruby applications leaves developers in an uncanny valley between the two universes..

With the recent rise of Gradle, which was designed to support a polyglot ecosystem through a rich plugin architecture, there is light at the end of the tunnel for JRuby developers!

This talk will introduce the jruby-gradle project, an effort to combine the very best in Java tooling with the Ruby world, providing top-notch integration for JRuby devs. During the talk we will cover the motivations of the jruby-gradle project and describe how it helps bridge the gap between Java and Ruby. By combining the flexibility of JRuby with the power of Gradle, we can breathe new life into JRuby, opening it up to an even broader audience than before.