On Sunday 12 June 2005 09:20, Phil Tomson wrote:
[...]
> Bottom line: Ruby needs help in the performance area. Let's admit that
> and work on improving in that area instead of shooting the messenger -
> it'll make us look like whiners if we keep doing the latter. I'd really
> rather not have the Ruby community perceived that way from the outside.
[...]

Im slowly getting fed up with this whining, "Ruby is so slow".
Especially if it's compared to Python.

Ever directly compared Ruby vs. Python solutions with regards to
performance?
Python is damn slow at startup, despite loading byte- instead of
sourcecode. On my machine, there is (approximately) a linear
ratio between LOPC and startup time: About 0.1 second per 200
LOPC. I've a Ruby script and a Python script doing the same thing
with a roughly equal model: The Ruby version takes ~0.06s,
the Python script ~0.26s for startup. Just to emphasize that a
bit: that's a factor of 4.3. (And the Ruby script is even 
longer because it has some additional features.)
For longer program runs, the Python version comes closer
(but never surpasses) the Ruby one.

In conclusion, IMO Ruby will perform better for batch processing
and I don't know if the opposite is true for bigger/longer running
applications. I don't believe that Python is faster for serious
apps (not just 5 line benchmarks) unless someone shows me a program
written in Ruby and Python were the Python one is significantly faster.

Stefan