In article <6e613a32.0303282059.d94f726 / posting.google.com>,
Daniel Berger <djberg96 / hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>One of the concerns I'm having about Ruby 1.8 is that it appears to be
>getting *slower*.  Not so much that it will be a serious issue for me,
>but Ruby's speed has been something some of the Perl and Python folks
>have been using against Ruby.  I visited the Great Computer Language
>Shootout (http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/), put together 9 of
>the functions he used and ran them using both 1.6.8 and 1.8 p2.
>
>In 7 of the 9 tests, 1.8 was *slower*.  Should I be worried?
>
>Here is a sampling of the results.  Complete code at the bottom.  I
>ran the benchmarks and almost always came up with the same results -
>1.6.8 was faster in 7 of 9 tests (and sometimes 8).  The one place
>where I noticed a massive improvement, however, was in the 'list'
>test.
>
>Dual Pentium II 400
>512 MB RAM
>Mandrake Linux 9.0
>
># 1.6.8
>                       user     system      total        real
>Ackermann function:    1.430000   0.000000   1.430000 (  1.450032)
>Array access:          9.010000   0.020000   9.030000 (  9.139022)
>Fibonacci numbers:     8.940000   0.010000   8.950000 (  9.036173)
>Hash access I:         7.260000   0.000000   7.260000 (  7.241685)
>Hash access II:        9.960000   0.060000  10.020000 ( 10.047116)
>Lists:                 19.250000  0.050000  19.300000 ( 19.398597)
>Nested loop:           10.460000 0.010000  10.470000 ( 10.538426)
>Sieve of Eratosthenes: 13.880000   0.040000  13.920000 ( 13.926563)
>Word Frequency:        2.700000   0.000000   2.700000 (  2.669599)
>
># 1.8.0 preview 2
>                       user     system      total        real
>Ackermann function:    1.560000   0.000000   1.560000 (  1.545286)
>Array access:          10.020000   0.010000  10.030000 ( 10.017142)
>Fibonacci numbers:     9.130000   0.010000   9.140000 (  9.201564)
>Hash access I:         7.960000   0.010000   7.970000 (  8.046752)
>Hash access II:        9.780000   0.030000   9.810000 (  9.939460)
>Lists:                 2.320000   0.020000   2.340000 (  2.337373)
>Nested loop:           11.850000   0.000000  11.850000 ( 11.849551)
>Sieve of Eratosthenes: 15.030000   0.040000  15.070000 ( 15.065020)
>Word Frequency:        2.990000   0.020000   3.010000 (  3.003743)
>

That is somewhat worrisome... I was hoping we were moving the other 
direction.  

Phil