[greenpeas]

But why would a compiler engineer that's not familiar with Ruby work on Ruby? They have so many other languages to choose from. I don't necessarily think that writing a JIT in Ruby is a good strategy to attract people to work on it, but if you are going to attract compiler people, you most likely want those who are also Rubyists.

[JonChesterfield]

Speaking mostly for myself, at least some compiler engineers like difficult source or target languages. The very dynamic ones are difficult to compile efficiently and thus more interesting than some alternatives. Plus Ruby hasn't had the attention paid to it that JavaScript has so the design space is closer to greenfield. I can see the attraction.