Simon,

On 2/24/06, Kroeger, Simon (ext) <simon.kroeger.ext / siemens.com> wrote:
> > Now how can it be that the ruby code is so awfully slow?
> > Is that normal for ruby?
...
> You got some answers and the short one is 'yes'. The long would be
> 'yes, but..' (as allways). Yes, but because you tend to write 'better'
> (and often faster) code after a while using ruby. I think the main
> reason is that writing 'better' code in C is so painfull. You write
> code that is easy to write in C and this code isn't 'good' (it's
> still fast enough because C is fast).
>
> > Or is my implementation so horribly bad?
>
> Not bad, but not especialy clever.
...
> So ruby is 3 times faster than C. *g*
> No bad.
>
> (look at my last solution on http://www.rubyquiz.com/quiz43.html
> for the code, but this last one is realy only optimized for speed
> so its ugly - perhaps look at the other ones also)

Thanks for the clear and educational response.  Us lurkers appreciate it.

Cameron