JRuby core developer Charles Nutter introduces a version of Ruby that uses type inference to help the compiler attain better performance. Nutter's experimental language is called Duby, and its performance using primitive types compares to that of Java.

In a recent blog post, David MacIver discusses a useful Scala construct: implicit function arguments.

ParallelArray is a new class, proposed for Java 7, that makes it easy to automatically parallelize aggregate operations on in-memory data. Brian Goetz's latest IBM developerWorks article introduces this class with code examples.

I’ve been doing this job for decades and I can’t remember a time when people weren’t carrying on about data types. To my way of thinking, this hysteria has often resulted in overdesigned solutions that are so safe it isn’t actually practical to use them. Sort of like wearing a seat belt while sitting at the kitchen table.

Cedric Beust, creator of TestNG and co-author of the book Next-Generation Testing, discusses the downsides of test-driven development, and shares his own testing rules-of-thumb in a recent blog post.

As developers consider Scala for enterprise software projects, the manner in which the language evolves becomes an important question. In a recent blog post, Jevgeni Kabanov discusses the need for a well-defined process in moving Scala forward.

Zed Shaw, creator of the Mongrel HTTP daemon, explains how the decision to use any language, including Ruby, depends on the appropriateness to task and the amount of yak shaving necessary. He lists 7 plusses and 6 minuses of using Ruby for enterprise computing tasks.

Adobe released this week its Integrated Runtime (AIR) 1.0, a platform for building rich-client applications for the desktop. In an interview with Artima, Adobe product management director Phil Costa discusses the new AIR platform from a developer's perspective.

The latest release of the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library includes six new Ajax components, such as an image cropper, a file uploader, and a dual-thumb slider, and significant updates to the data table, layout managers, and other components. YUI 2.5 now also comes with over 270 examples and expanded documentation.

Today Adobe released the latest versions of its Flex SDK, now under an open-source license, and the Eclipse-based FlexBuilder IDE. In an interview with Artima, Adobe's James Ward discusses new features in these products.

The main job of a phone, after all, is to behave in a phone-like manner: always connected, always on and always available. If application failure could preempt these canonical device behaviors, we’d have, um..Windows. But we don’t. Thus, an incorruptible safety net is required, and we get this from the Symbian Leave architecture.

Martin Aspeli identifies in a recent CIO.com article when Python is the right choice for enterprise computing tasks, and when another language might be a better option.

Scala aims to combine object-oriented and functional programming. In a recent IBM developerWorks article, Ted Neward discusses the similarities and differences between Java and Scala classes.

Erik Engbrecht discusses a new numeric library for Scala that provides typesafe, mathematically correct number types that also perform well.

In a video at java.sun.com, Bill Foote, Sun's Blu-ray Disc Java (BDJ) architect, explains Java's role in high definition Blu-ray Discs, and demonstrates the kind of interactivity it enables.