Having looked at OCaml, after following a post to this group, one
thing that stands out about OCaml is it's native compilation and raw
speed over C and C++.

What prevents Ruby from acheiving native compilation, dynamic typing? 
If so, could Ruby implement a `require static' to force strict type
checking to provide for machine level compilation.

If Ruby could compile to native, forget byte compilation.  The one
thing that's been on my Java Christmas List for almost a decade now
(7yrs) has been native compilation.  Just give me a `native' compiler,
I'll manage the rest.

Game over, if Java or Ruby provides native compilation; it won't make
sense to code with anything else.

//ed