Lambda the Ultimate

On Ruby has an interview with two members of the Diamondback Ruby team.

There is a long-discussed tension between statically [...] typed languages like Java and dynamically [...] typed languages like Ruby. My hope has been to discover how to include the best aspects of static and dynamic typing in a single language. We all really like Ruby's design and features, and felt it was the right language to start with. As we go, we'll look to derive general design principles that make sense for most any programming language, to simplify and improve the process of programming generally.

The interview covers DRuby's goals as well as a bit about its OCaml based infrastructure. More technical information about DRuby's type system can be found in Static Type Inference for Ruby.