--- title: A $50 ticket, 60 people, and a Java dev who understood... description: Charles Nutter recounts discovering Ruby at a small 2004 RubyConf after a friend's recommendation, despite having no prior knowledge of the language. As a Java... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/a-50-ticket-60-people-and-a-java-dev-who-understood-every-ruby-slide-that-s-how-charles-nutter-w-gspqgcru6 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: A $50 ticket, 60 people, and a Java dev who understood every Ruby slide. That's how Charles Nutter w | daily.dev og:description: Charles Nutter recounts discovering Ruby at a small 2004 RubyConf after a friend's recommendation, despite having no prior knowledge of the language. As a Java... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/a-50-ticket-60-people-and-a-java-dev-who-understood-every-ruby-slide-that-s-how-charles-nutter-w-gspqgcru6 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gSPqgcRU6.png og:image:alt: A $50 ticket, 60 people, and a Java dev who understood every Ruby slide. That's how Charles Nutter w og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # A $50 ticket, 60 people, and a Java dev who understood every Ruby slide. That's how Charles Nutter w **[Coffee \+ Software](https://daily.dev/sources/coffee-software)** · 1 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Charles Nutter recounts discovering Ruby at a small 2004 RubyConf after a friend's recommendation, despite having no prior knowledge of the language. As a Java developer, he was struck by how easily he could read and understand Ruby code and slides. This led him to search for a way to use Ruby on the JVM, discovering the dormant JRuby project (started around 2001) that had only a couple of contributors, and deciding to pick up development on it himself. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How did Charles Nutter get involved with the JRuby project? Charles Nutter discovered Ruby at RubyConf 2004, a small conference with about 60 attendees and a $50 ticket price, recommended to him by a friend. As a Java developer with no prior Ruby knowledge, he was surprised he could read and understand every slide and code example. This inspired him to search for a Java-based Ruby implementation, finding the JRuby project, which had started around 2001 but was far behind in compatibility and had only a couple of contributors, so he began working on it himself. _Explore how daily.dev surfaces stories like this behind JVM language projects such as JRuby._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [JRuby at RubyConf 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/jruby-at-rubyconf-2026-kza4xvnlm) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Special Guest: Yukihiro Matsumoto \(The creator of Ruby programming language\) 2/2: tech-talk - The trajectory of Ruby's growth, Open-Source Software today, Matz's favorite languages, People of the Ruby](https://daily.dev/posts/special-guest-yukihiro-matsumoto-the-creator-of-ruby-programming-language-2-2-tech-talk---the-tr-a9a2wjkwp) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Bootiful Podcast: JRuby lead Charles Nutter](https://daily.dev/posts/a-bootiful-podcast-jruby-lead-charles-nutter-djffynwsu) · Spring · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ruby Programming Language](https://daily.dev/posts/ruby-programming-language-xlmujxgbj) · Lobsters · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#java](https://daily.dev/tags/java), [#ruby](https://daily.dev/tags/ruby) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/a-50-ticket-60-people-and-a-java-dev-who-understood-every-ruby-slide-that-s-how-charles-nutter-w-gspqgcru6) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"A $50 ticket, 60 people, and a Java dev who understood every Ruby slide. 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