Ruby for Embedded Applications
by David Goodlad
With the growth of faster and cheaper low-power processors and inexpensive
RAM, the days where embedded applications had to be developed in C or
assembler are numbered. For many applications, it is now possible to provide
excellent performance with software written primarily in our favorite
language, Ruby. There are, however, some special challenges when targetting a
Ruby app to an embedded computer with limited computing resources.
Some of the key challenges that will be addressed will include minimization of
RAM and processor usage, deployment and cross-compilation using OpenEmbedded,
communication with other embedded systems, and interfaces (primarily
web-based). Discussion will mainly be practical rather than theoretical, with
a real-life application to be used as a case-study.
About David Goodlad
David is a professional software developer living and working in Vernon, BC, Canada. He has a wide
array of experience in a number of languages, but has been focused on Ruby and C for the past 4
years.