Eric Mahurin wrote: -snip- > Compare that to ruby - from about 0.25% to 10% of C (language > shootout). Which language shootout? On these Ruby can be 100x slower than C (and is never shown faster than C). http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=ruby&lang2=icc&sort=fullcpu http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/old/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=ruby&lang2=icc&sort=fullcpu