Interesting post on parallel programming, "High Level Concurrency with JRuby and Akka Actors" http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/high-level-concurrency-with-jruby-and-akka-actors/ Something we'll use soon. Note that Akka is written in Scala, by one of the brightest people: Jonas Bonér, Pj.