Dragonfly is a new(-ish!) ruby gem for handling images and other content in Ruby web apps (including Rails). “What – another one?!”.. I hear you exclaim.

The Cucumber behavior-driven development framework is appreciated by developers from many languages. It makes it easy to write plain-text stories that run executable Ruby code against your application.

In this hour and ten minute screencast, you’ll learn the basics of Cucumber. You’ll learn the syntax, organization, and philosophy of writing Features, Scenarios, and Steps. You’ll build an application and learn where unit tests are a better fit.

In order to execute Ruby code as fast as possible, Rubinius has the ability to compile Ruby code all the way down to machine code when it detects that a method is heavily used. In Rubinius, the system that manages this process is its JIT.

In today’s post, I’ll be giving an overview of the various players involved in the path that code takes to get from source to machine code. Without further ado, I’ll jump right in.

Yesterday I gave a presentation about CouchDB and SimplyStored, our convenience Ruby library, at the Ruby User Group Berlin.

There is a recording of the presentation at ustream.tv.