Why the lucky stiff, who brought us the fabuolous "Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby", just released this new awesome web application: Try Ruby Try Ruby is a web based, interactive Ruby tutorial, sort of like IRB on steroids. If you are curious about the kinds of things newbies and script kiddies are trying out in the console, check out Why's recent blog post....
Over the past 5 years or so, the hype around web services has grown continuously. At the same time, the complexity of the relevant specifications has steadily increased. Just think of all the buzzwords like SOAP, WSDL, XML Schema, etc....
It sounds like a new book might need to be added to the list of must-have Ruby books: "Enterprise Integration with Ruby", written by Maik Schmidt and published as a Pragmatic Bookshelf title, is currently in beta. As with all Pragmatic Bookshelf titles, you can purchase the beta PDF now and receive the full PDF or paper version of the book as soon as it comes out....
One of the Java programming questions I like to ask in interviews is: "Is Java pass-by-value or pass-by-reference?" A surprising amount of Java developers get this wrong, generally because the variables you mostly deal with in Java (other than primitives) are actually references to objects, rather than containing the objects themselves....
Here's one way to compare the Ruby and Java technology stacks. :) (via the Ruby on Rails Blog) Update: Here's the true origin of this comparison.