Ville Mattila wrote:
> moma <moma / example.net> writes:
> 
>>So it's not fair to compare Ruby's runtime against Mono or .Net.
> 
>   I agree it is pointless to compare apples to oranges.
> 
>   There similar benchmark data for YARV (the ruby VM project). Here
>   ruby has equal performance against MONO. See for example:
>   http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/yarv-devel/2005-February/thread.html

I think the OP makes a valid point, if only because the performance 
difference is measured in multiple orders of magnitude.  In general, 
Perl and Python do not do nearly so poorly in such comparisons.  All 
this equivocation about how Ruby does well enough on real tasks is just 
defensive posturing.  The fact is, Ruby is remarkably slower for many 
common tasks, and it can take a clever hand to isolate and eliminate 
Ruby performance bottlenecks.  Resorting to inline/embedded code in 
another language is simply a bald concession of the point, not a proof 
that Ruby is doing OK.

The few benchmarks posted by the YARV folks hint that pure Ruby 
performance could be much, much better.  I think this may become the 
single most critical factor in the acceptance of Ruby.  Right now, Ruby 
still looks more like an academic project than a production system. 
It's lovely to look at, but it's lacking raw power.

Based on languages with similar features, I would have to say there is 
plenty of room for improvement.  Perl and Python have all been though 
the same arguments before.  Every interpreted language eventually 
reaches a performance threshold where it becomes necessary and practical 
to drop into a compiled language.  The problem is that the Ruby 
threshold is quite low.

I can develop beautiful solutions in Ruby, but if the Ruby performance 
penalty is drastic enough, all the language purity in the world won't 
pay for the extra hardware I need to make Ruby a profitable choice.

-- 
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoil.com/>