How does Ruby work? That is, the Ruby virtual machine — often known as the MRI — is what runs the bytecodes into which our Ruby program is translated. But how does the Ruby VM actually do what it needs? And what does the Ruby VM do to improve the efficiency of our code?  In this talk, Aaron Patterson provides a gentle introduction to VMs in general, and the Ruby VM in particular. If you’re a Ruby developer, and have ever wondered how your code is executed, or why Ruby works the way it does, this talk will be of great interest.