Microsoft Hires Ruby Guru

Microsoft has beefed up its efforts to make dynamic languages play well on the .Net platform with the hire of John Lam, an expert in the Ruby language.

John Lam is the creator of the RubyCLR bridge between the Ruby language and the Microsoft CLR (Common Language Runtime). He will be joining Microsoft in January, although he says he is limited as to what he can say.

Yet, observers note that it is not difficult to assume Lam will likely be working on helping to create an implementation of Ruby that runs on the CLR.

Microsoft hired Jim Hugunin in August 2004 to join its CLR team. And Hugunin’s group managed to deliver an implementation of Python on .Net earlier this year. That implementation, IronPython 1.0, went live last month.

Now enter Lam and his Ruby skills.

“I’ve decided to stage a friendly takeover of Microsoft. As of January 2007 my new work address will be Building 42 at Microsoft,” Lam said in a blog post on Oct. 21. “I’ll be working in the CLR team to help bring the love of dynamic languages out to the statically typed heathens.”

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