The Ruby Bibliography The Ruby Bib Ruby Bib Ruby Bib Academic writing on the Ruby programming language

The Ruby programming language hasn't historically been the subject of much research, either in industry or academia. A lot of recent systems research has used languages like C, C++ and Java. Contemporary programming language research often uses languages like Java, Scala, Racket and Haskell. Modern research into VMs, compilers and garbage collectors is often based on Java or recently Python.

However there are now a growing number of research projects using Ruby. On this page we list theses and peer-reviewed papers and articles that cover Ruby implementation or use Ruby, including alternative implementations such as JRuby.

Virtual Machines and Compilers

# B. Daloze. Thread-Safe and Efficient Data Representations in Dynamically-Typed Languages. PhD thesis, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 2019. TruffleRuby

# R. Mosaner, D. Leopoldseder, M. Rigger, R. Schatz, H. Mössenböck. Supporting On-Stack Replacement in Unstructured Languages by Loop Reconstruction and Extraction. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Managed Programming Languages and Runtimes (MPLR), 2019. TruffleRuby

# K. Sasada. Gradual Write-Barrier Insertion into a Ruby interpreter. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Management (ISMM), 2019. MRI

# K. Sugiyama, K. Sasada, M. J. Dürst. Dynamic Extension of the Ruby Virtual Machine Stack. In the IPSJ Journal of Programming (PRO), 2018. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Menard, C. Seaton, B. Daloze. Specializing Ropes for Ruby. In Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Managed Languages & Runtimes (ManLang), 2018. TruffleRuby

# M. Grimmer, R. Schatz, C. Seaton, T. Würthinger, M. Luján. Cross-Language Interoperability in a Multi-Language Runtime. In ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Vol. 40, No. 2, 2018. TruffleRuby

# B. Yang, J. Kim, S. Moon. Exceptionalization: A Java VM Optimization for Non-Java Languages. In ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), volume 14, issue 1, 2017. JRuby Paywall

# S. Xu, D. Bremner, D. Heidinga. Fusing Method Handle Graphs for Efficient Dynamic JVM Language Implementations. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages (VMIL), 2017. JRuby

# T. Würthinger, C. Wimmer, C. Humer, A. Wöss, L. Stadler, C. Seaton, G. Duboscq, D. Simon, M. Grimmer. Practical Partial Evaluation for High-Performance Dynamic Language Runtimes. In Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2017. TruffleRuby

# S. Georgiou, M. Kechagia, D. Spinellis. Analyzing Programming Languages’ Energy Consumption: An Empirical Study. In Proceedings of the 21st Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics (PCI), 2017.

# S. Marr, B. Daloze, H. Mössenböck. Cross-Language Compiler Benchmarking - Are We Fast Yet? In Proceedings of the 12th Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS), 2016. TruffleRuby JRuby Rubinius MRI

# C. Seaton. AST Specialisation and Partial Evaluation for Easy High-Performance Metaprogramming. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Meta-Programming Techniques and Reflection (META), 2016. TruffleRuby

# S. Xu, D. Bremner, D. Heidinga. MHDeS: Deduplicating Method Handle Graphs for Efficient Dynamic JVM Language Implementations. In Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of Object-Oriented Languages, Programs and Systems (ICOOOLPS), 2016. JRuby

# M. Ide. Study on Method-based and Trace-based Just-in-time Compilation for Scripting Languages. PhD thesis, Yokohama National University, 2015. MRI

# M. Ide, K. Kuramitsu. A Trace-based Just-in-time Compiler for Ruby. In Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Transactions on Programming, 2015. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Tanaka, A. D. Nagumanthri, Y. Matsumoto. mruby – Rapid Software Development for Embedded Systems. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA), 2015. mruby

# S. Xu, D. Bremner, D. Heidinga. Mining Method Handle Graphs for Efficient Dynamic JVM Languages. In ACM proceedings 12th Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java Platform (PPPJ), 2015. JRuby

# M. Viering. An Efficient Runtime System for Reactive Programming. Master thesis, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2015. TruffleRuby

# C. Seaton. Specialising Dynamic Techniques for Implementing the Ruby Programming Language. PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2015. TruffleRuby

# M. Grimmer, C. Seaton, R. Schatz, T. Würthinger, H. Mössenböck. High-Performance Cross-Language Interoperability in a Multi-Language Runtime. In Proceedings of the 11th Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS), 2015. TruffleRuby

# F. Niephaus, M. Springer, T. Felgentreff, T. Pape, R. Hirschfeld. Call-target-specific Method Arguments. In Proceedings of the 10th Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of Object-Oriented Languages, Programs and Systems Workshop (ICOOOLPS), 2015. TruffleRuby

# B. Daloze, C. Seaton, D. Bonetta, H. Mössenböck. Techniques and Applications for Guest-Language Safepoints. In Proceedings of the 10th Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of Object-Oriented Languages, Programs and Systems Workshop (ICOOOLPS), 2015. TruffleRuby

# S. Marr, C. Seaton, S. Ducasse. Zero-Overhead Metaprogramming: Reflection and Metaobject Protocols Fast and without Compromises. In Proceedings of the 36th Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2015. TruffleRuby

# M. Grimmer, C. Seaton, T. Würthinger, H. Mössenböck. Dynamically Composing Languages in a Modular Way: Supporting C Extensions for Dynamic Languages. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Modularity, 2015. TruffleRuby

# A. Wöß, C. Wirth, D. Bonetta, C. Seaton, C. Humer, H. Mössenböck. An Object Storage Model for the Truffle Language Implementation Framework. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java Platform (PPPJ), 2014. TruffleRuby

# A. Sarimbekov, A. Podzimek, L. Bulej, Y. Zheng, N. Ricci, W. Binder. Characteristics of Dynamic JVM Languages. In Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Virtual Machines and Intermediate Languages (VMIL), 2013. JRuby

# W. Hang Li, D. R. White, J. Singer. JVM-Hosted Languages: They Talk the Talk, but do they Walk the Walk? In Proceedings of the International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java Platform (PPPJ), 2013. JRuby

# M. Springer. Inter-language Collaboration in an Object-oriented Virtual Machine. Bachelor’s thesis, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, 2013. MagLev

# S. Shiba, K. Sasada, K. Hiraki. CastOff: A Compiler for Ruby Implemented as a Library. In Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Transactions on Programming, 2012. In Japanese. MRI

# S. Shiba, K. Sasada, S. Urabe, Y. Matsumoto, M. Inaba, K. Hiraki. A Practical AOT Compiler for Ruby. In Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Transactions on Programming, 2011. In Japanese. MRI

# S. Zakirov, S. Chiba, E. Shibayama. How to Select Superinstructions for Ruby. In Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Transactions on Programming, 2010. MRI

# S. Zakirov, S. Chiba, E. Shibayama. Optimizing Dynamic Dispatch with Fine-grained State Tracking. In Proceedings of the Dynamic Language Symposium, 2010. Paywall

# M. Furr, J. An, J. S. Foster, M. Hicks. The Ruby Intermediate Language. In Proceedings of the Dynamic Language Symposium, 2009.

# K. Sasada. Ricsin: A System for “C Mix-in to Ruby”. In Proceedings of the IPSJ Programming Workshop, 2009. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Sasada. A Lightweight Representation of Floting-Point Numbers on Ruby Interpreter. In Proceedings of PPL, 2008. In Japanese. MRI

# G. B. Prokopski, C. Verbrugge. Analyzing the Performance of Code-Copying Virtual Machines. In Proceedings of the 23rd Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2008. MRI Paywall

# W. Kelly, J. Gough. Ruby.NET: a Ruby Compiler for the Common Language Infrastructure. In Proceedings of the 31st Australasian Conference on Computer Science, 2008.

# K. Sasada, Y. Matsumoto, A. Maeda, M. Namiki. YARV: Yet Another RubyVM The Implementation and Evaluation. In the IPSJ Journal of Programming (PRO), 2005. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Sasada. YARV: Yet Another RubyVM: Innovating the Ruby Interpreter. In Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2005. MRI

Parallelism and Concurrency

# M. Springer. Memory-Efficient Object-Oriented Programming on GPUs. PhD thesis, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2019.

# A. Ohiwa, H. Haga. Design and Implementation of Multi Agent Simulation Library MasCUDA for Parallel Processing with GPU. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Electronics and Electrical Engineering Technology (EEET), 2019. Paywall

# B. Daloze, A. Tal, S. Marr, H. Mössenböck, E. Petrank. Parallelization of Dynamic Languages: Synchronizing Built-in Collections. In Proceedings of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2018. TruffleRuby

# M. Sprinter, P. Wauligmann, H. Masuhara. Modular Array-Based GPU Computing in a Dynamically-Typed Language. In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Libraries, Languages, and Compilers for Array Programming (ARRAY), 2017.

# M. Springer, H. Masuhara. Object Support in an Array-Based GPGPU Extension for Ruby. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Libraries, Languages, and Compilers for Array Programming (ARRAY), 2016.

# B. Daloze, S. Marr, D. Bonetta, H. Mössenböck. Efficient and Thread-Safe Objects for Dynamically-Typed Languages. In Proceedings of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2016. TruffleRuby

# J. Alcázar Zapién. Debugging Parallel Programs Using Fork Handlers. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Programming Models and Applications for Multicores and Manycores (PMAM), 2015. Paywall

# C. Ding, B. Gernhardt, P. Li, M. Hertz. Safe Parallel Programming in an Interpreted Language. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on the High Performance Scripting Languages, 2015. MRI

# L. Lu, W. Ji, M. L. Scott. Dynamic Enforcement of Determinism in a Parallel Scripting Language. In Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2014. (source code) JRuby

# R. Odaira, J. G. Castanos, H. Tomari. Eliminating Global Interpreter Locks in Ruby Through Hardware Transactional Memory. In Proceedings of the 19th Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), 2014. MRI

# W. Ji, L. Lu, M. L. Scott. TARDIS: Task-level Access Race Detection by Intersecting Sets. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Determinism and Correctness in Parallel Programming (WoDet), 2013. JRuby

# H. Masuhara, Y. Nishiguchi. A Data-Parallel Extension to Ruby for GPGPU - Toward a Framework for Implementing Domain-Specific Optimizations. In Proceedings of the 9th ECOOP Workshop on Reflection, AOP, and Meta-Data for Software Evolution, 2012. Paywall

# H. Nakagawa, K. Sasada. Design and Implementation of Efficient Interprocess Transfer and Sharing Mechanism for Ruby Objects. In the IPSJ Journal of Programming (PRO), 2012. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Sasada, S. Urabe, Y. Matsumoto, K Hiraki. Parallel Processing on Multiple Virtual Machine for Ruby. In the IPSJ Journal of Programming (PRO), 2012. In Japanese. MRI

# K. Sasada. The Improvement of Thread Implementation for Ruby Interpreter. In the IPSJ Programming Symposium, 2011. In Japanese. MRI

# J. Sillito. Stage: Exploring Erlang Style Concurrency in Ruby. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Multicore Software Engineering, 2008. Paywall

# K. Sasada, Y. Matsumoto, A. Maeda, M. Namiki. An Implementation of Parallel Threads for YARV: Yet Another RubyVM. In the IPSJ Journal of Programming (PRO), 2007. In Japanese. MRI

Type Systems

# M. Kazerounian, S. N. Guria, N. Vazou, J. S. Foster, D. Van Horn. Type-level Computations for Ruby Libraries. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2019.

# M. Kazerounian, N. Vazou, A. Bourgerie, J. S. Foster, E. Torlak. Refinement Types for Ruby. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI), 2018.

# B. M. Ren, J. S. Foster. Just-in-Time Static Type Checking for Dynamic Languages. In Proceedings of the 37th Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2016.

# B. M. Ren, J. Toman, T. S. Strickland, J. S. Foster. The Ruby Type Checker. In Proceedings of the 28th Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), 2013.

# J. An, A. Chaudhuri, J. S. Foster, M. Hicks. Dynamic Inference of Static Types for Ruby. In Proceedings of the 38th ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), 2011.

# M. J. Edgar. Static Analysis for Ruby in the Presence of Gradual Typing. Bachelor’s thesis, 2011.

# M. Madsen, P. Sørensen, K. Kristensen. Ecstatic - Type Inference for Ruby Using the Cartesian Product Algorithm. Master’s thesis, Aalborg University, 2007.

# M. Furr, J. An, J. S. Foster, M. Hicks. Static Typing for Ruby on Rails. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2009.

# M. Furr, J. An, J. S. Foster. Work In Progress: an Empirical Study of Static Typing in Ruby. In Proceedings of the PLATEAU Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools, 2009.

# M. Daly, V. Sazawal, J. S. Foster. Profile-Guided Static Typing for Dynamic Scripting Languages. In Proceedings of the Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA), 2009.

# J. An, A. Chaudhuri, J. S. Foster. Static Type Inference for Ruby. In Proceedings of the 24th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, 2009.

Garbage Collection

# B. Powers, D. Tench, E. D. Berger, A. McGregor. Mesh: Compacting Memory Management for C/C++ Applications. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), 2019.

Tooling

# S. Gaikwad, A. Nisbet, M. Luján. Performance Analysis for Languages Hosted on the Truffle Framework. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Managed Languages and Runtimes (MANLANG), 2018. TruffleRuby Paywall

# J. Kreindl, M. Rigger, H. Mössenböck. Debugging Native Extensions of Dynamic Languages. In Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Managed Languages & Runtimes (ManLang), 2018. TruffleRuby

# M. Van De Vanter, C. Seaton, M. Haupt, C. Humer, T. Würthinger. Fast, Flexible, Polyglot Instrumentation Support for Debuggers and other Tools. In The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2018. TruffleRuby

# S. Miranda, E. Rodrigues Jr, M. T. Valente, R. Terra. Architecture Conformance Checking in Dynamically Typed Languages. In the Journal of Object Technology (JOT), 2016.

# G. Savrun-Yeniçeri, M. L. Van de Vanter, P. Larsen, S. Brunthaler. An Efficient and Generic Event-based Profiler Framework for Dynamic Languages. In Proceedings of the Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java Platform (PPPJ), 2015. TruffleRuby Paywall

# C. Seaton, M. L. Van De Vanter, M. Haupt. Debugging at Full Speed. In Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Dynamic Languages and Applications (DYLA), 2014. (source code) TruffleRuby

# T. Sunaga, K. Sasada. Design and Implementation of Real-time Profilers for Scripting Languages. In the JSSST Computer Software (2012). In Japanese. MRI

# J. Nijjar, T. Bultan. Bounded Verification of Ruby on Rails Data Models. In Proceedings of the 2011 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, 2011.

Software Engineering

# E. Rodrigues, R. S. Durelli, R. W. de Bettio, L. Montecchi, R. Terra. Refactorings for Replacing Dynamic Instructions with Static Ones: the Case of Ruby. In Proceedings of the XXII Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages (SBLP), 2018. *In Portuguese.** Paywall

# R. Kikvas, G. Gousious, M. Dumas, D. Pfahl. Structure and Evolution of Package Dependency Networks. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, 2017.

# P. Salem. Practical Programming, Validation and Verification with Finite-State Machines: a Library and its Industrial Application. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (ICSE), 2016. Paywall

# T. S. Strickland, B. M. Ren, J. S. Foster. Contracts for Domain-Specific Languages in Ruby. In Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Dynamic Languages (DLS), 2014.

# T. F. J.-M. Pasquier, J. Bacon, B. Shand. FlowR: Aspect Oriented Programming for Information Flow Control in Ruby. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Modularity (MODULARITY), 2014.

# T. Poncelet, L. Vigneron. The Phenomenal Gem - Putting Features as a Service on Rails. Master’s thesis, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2012.

# A. Loh, W. R. Cook, T. van der Storm. Managed Data: Modular Strategies for Data Abstraction. In Proceedings of Onward!, 2012.

# T. van der Storm, A. Loh, W. R. Cook. Object Grammars: Compositional & Bidirectional Mapping Between Text and Graphs. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Software Language Engineering, 2012.

# S. Mairhofer, R. Feldt, R. Torkar, S. Poulding. Search-Based Software Testing and Test Data Generation for a Dynamic Programming Language. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, 2011.

# S. Günther, M. Fischer. Metaprogramming in Ruby - A Pattern Catalog. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, 2010.

# S. Günther, T. Cleenewerck. Design Principles for Internal Domain-Specific Languages: A Pattern Catalog Illustrated by Ruby. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, 2010.

# S. Günther, S. Sunkle. Dynamically Adaptable Software Product Lines using Ruby Metaprogramming. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development, 2010.

# S. Günther, S. Sunkle. Feature-Oriented Programming with Ruby. Technical report, 2009.

# S. Günther, S. Sunkle. Enabling Feature-Oriented Programming in Ruby. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development, 2009. Paywall

# A. Oritz. Language Design and Implementation Using Ruby and the Interpreter Pattern. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2008.

# K. Geebelen, S. Michiels, W. Joosen. Dynamic Reconfiguration Using Template Based Web Service Composition. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Middleware for Service Oriented Computing, 2008. Paywall

# R. J. Scheehan. Teaching Operating Systems With Ruby. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, 2007. Paywall

Security

# J. P. Near, D. Jackson. Finding Security Bugs in Web Applications using a Catalog of Access Control Patterns. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2016.

# A. Chaudhuri, J. Foster. Symbolic Security Analysis of Ruby-on-Rails Web Applications. In Proceedings of the 17th Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2010.

Computer Vision

# J. Wedekind. Efficient Implementations of Machine Vision Algorithms using a Dynamically Typed Programming Language. PhD thesis, 2012.

Bioinformatics

# R. Smith, R. Williamson, D. Ventura, J. T. Prince. Rubabel: wrapping open Babel with Ruby. Journal of Cheminformatics, 5(1), 35, 2013.

# N. Goto, P. Prins, M. Nakao, R. Bonnal, J. Aerts, T. Katayama. Bioruby: bioinformatics software for the Ruby programming language. Bioinformatics, 26(20):2617–9, Oct 2010.

Robotics

# B. Roman, C. Scholin, S. Jensen, E. Massion, R. Marin III, C. Preston, D. Greenfield, W. Jones, K. Wheeler. Controlling a Robotic Marine Environmental Sampler with the Ruby Scripting Language. JALA - Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation, 12(1), 56-61, 2007.

Modeling and Simulation

# J. S. Cuadrado, J. G. Molina, M. M. Tortosa. RubyTL: A Practical, Extensible Transformation Language. Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, 2006. Paywall

Standards

# IPA Ruby Standardization WG. ISO/IEC 30170:2012 Information technology — Programming languages — Ruby. The Ruby ISO standard, 2012. Paywall