Charles O Nutter wrote:
> I'll lob a couple of grenades and then duck for cover.
>
> - Write it in C is as valid as write it in Java (as someone else 
> mentioned).
> Java is at least as fast as C for most algorithms. 

As someone who is paid to program in Java I very seriously doubt this. 
However I will write a Java version of the code and time it. It should 
be interesting to say the least.

> All this said, there's truth to the idea that we shouldn't *have* to 
> write
> platform-level code to get reasonable performance, and every effort 
> should
> be made to improve the speed of Ruby code as near as possible to that 
> of the
> underlying platform code. 
We are talking about two different things here. I was talking about 
performance as being the number 1 absolute top priority, you are talking 
about 'reasonable performance'. As far as I am concerned for those 
scripts that I don't convert to C Perl, Ruby and Python are fast enough. 
Other people think that they are not, they seem to expect the sort of 
performance C gives when they write things in a scripting language. I 
think that they are barking.