Ruby is fast. I don't mean that it's "not slow," I mean that the
language itself and its users move quickly. When major frameworks and influential Rubyists declare that a new version should be supported and an old one deprecated, many, many people follow. The switch from Ruby 1.8.7 to 1.9.2/3 left behind some valuable tools that Rubyists relied on to introspect on running processes. Memprof, REE, and other profiling technologies aren't 1.9.2 compatible. JRuby can leverage the JVM's tools, and Rubinius has some ideas floating, but as a community, we're flying blind.
In this talk I'll bring in examples from other modern languages such as Java, Javascript, and Erlang, to show how they're solving the problems of profiling processes, debugging code, and introspecting on processes. I'll of course discuss what JRuby and Rubinius have to offer, and look to tools like DTrace for inspiration as to what Ruby can do to ensure a more stable, reliable Ruby 2.0 and beyond.