I wonder if he gave Rubinius a go before switching to C++. IANAGD, but i'm guessing some of it's features would benefit game engines: Tunable GC, profiling (http://rubini.us/doc/en/tools/profiler/), JIT/LLVM. It wouldn't solve the C extension problem (maybe FFI does?) or distribution though.
No, I didn't. I love the features Rubinius gives you, but Windows support still needs a lot of work, and if I'd dived in to help, I'll never ship the game.
