We all love ruby, but sometimes ruby is not enough. Whether it be a performance bottleneck, a killer library written in C or some platform specific functionality you just have to have, sometimes you need to drop down a level.
There have been many talks that show how to take the first steps in writing a ruby C extension. This isn't one of them. I propose instead to give an overview of different ways of extending ruby and show what each approach brings to the table. I intend to cover 'classic' C extensions, RubyInline and FFI across a range of ruby implementations.
In the early days I mostly wrote C and objective-C, but since 2006 most of my days have been spent with ruby. I've written and supported large rails applications (mighty enough to not crumble duing a superbowl ad!), contributed to rails and other ruby projects (including fog and tire) and won a 2012 ruby hero award. I'm currently CTO at http://dressipi.com where we are building an online clothes recommendation service.
twitter: @fglc2 blog: http://www.spacevatican.org