On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> gcc     1.0
> yarv   13.2
> perl   14.0
> python 14.2
> php    15.5
> ruby   29.9
> jruby  55.0
>
.
.
.
> most of their time either in the database or on the network. The bad news is 
> that for an application with 100 percent dynamic language code -- no C 
> libraries for the intensive calculations, no highly-tuned web servers, 
> databases or other components -- you're going to end up throwing twice as 
> much hardware at scaling problems in Ruby as you will in PHP, Perl or Python. 
> The good news is that YARV will level the playing field.

And THAT is where microbenchmarks can lead one astray.  Compare PHP to 
Ruby, and objectively, PHP is faster.  However, it often takes a lot more 
PHP code than Ruby code to do a complex task.  So, when you start 
comparing complex systems written in both, that speed differential goes 
away.  The complex Ruby system often ends up comparable to, or even faster 
than the PHP system.


Kirk Haines