Is it just me that finds it a touch ironic that Sun is doing a better job impressing the Ruby community, that it has ever done on the Java side? Having DHH sit back and wax lyrically about you is about as rare as getting Hani onto your governing body. Oh, wait. The biggest surprise at RailsConf Europe 2007 was hearing Craig McClanahan from Sun speak. Craig is the creator of Struts, the original blockbuster web framework for Java, and more recently Java Server Faces. Not exactly an obvious advocate for Ruby on Rails, but he sure played the part well. And not just on a superficial level because Sun was a diamond sponsor of the conference, but from months of experience developing Rails applications using the latest techniques and frameworks (like pushing the envelope with Active Resource). He even went as far as to say that developing web applications in Java after working with Rails would probably not be a particularly pleasant experience for him. Wow. ... Yet there's still that nagging doomsday image of a mystery man sitting somewhere inside of Sun petting a black cat with a hollow laugh just waiting to reveal his evil master plan as the reason for all this. But the exceptional work and high character of people like Tim Bray, Nick Sieger, Thomas Enebo, Charles Nutter, and now even Craig McClanahan championing Ruby and Rails inside Sun, I think I'll have to waive goodbye to the last sliver of that suspicion very soon. Wow. Finally, Tim Bray may be pushing them towards a world where their ticker should be JVM not JAVA as their realize where the power of the platform truly lies.