On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 09:26:05PM +0900, Leslie Viljoen wrote:
> 
> Something else to consider is the ease with which Ruby extensions can
> be written in C. The first time I tried I has something running in 20
> minutes.
> 
> Though if I was going to choose a (single) language for raw
> performance I'd try to go with Pascal or Ada.

Pascal's sort of an iffy proposition for me, in comparison with C.  I'm
simply not sure that it can be optimized as thoroughly as C, in any
current implementations.  According to its spec, it can probably
outperform C if implemented well, and Borland Delphi does a reasonably
good job of that, but it has received considerably less attention from
compiler programmers over time and as such is probably lagging in
implementation performance.  It's kind of a mixed bag, and I'd like to
get more data on comparative performance characteristics than I
currently have.

Ada, on the other hand -- for circumstances in which it is most commonly
employed (embedded systems, et cetera), it does indeed tend to kick C's
behind a bit.  That may have more to do with compiler optimization than
language spec, though.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall