"I think JRuby may actually be the easiest way to run Ruby on Windows right now," said Nutter. JRuby previously has worked on Windows, but version 1.4.0 cleans up a lot of bugs pertaining to Windows, Nutter said.

Also featured in the JRuby upgrade are  more than 300 bug fixes and an embedding API.

Future plans for JRuby include cleaning up performance issues, offering a new optimizing compiler and JVM integration parity with other languages, such as Groovy. Also planned is support of the Java 7 invokedynamic capability, to improve how Ruby does method calls. Code will run faster via this capability.

"JRuby really is the enterprise Ruby," Nutter said. Plans also are moving forward to enable development of JRuby applications via Engine Yard's cloud platform, he noted. JRuby also works on Google's Android platform.

Separately from JRuby,   exists as a version of Ruby for Microsoft's .Net framework, relying on the Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime.