Hi All, I'm new here, and I hope I don't offend anyone by mentioning a different programming language here on Ruby-Talk. I have two questions that are borne of the fact that I have been searching for a language that provides both rapid development (via an interperter) and performance (via compilation to either byte- or native code). I understand that Ruby is being developed towards the realization of a VM for byte-code execution. My question is, will the interpreter function of Ruby remain? Will I be able to have the best of both worlds -- rapid development _and_ performance? I looked at the comparison of various computer programming languages at The Great Computer Language Shootout [http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/] and was a bit disappointed to see Ruby rated as low as it was in performance. This is the only reason I have not yet adopted Ruby. I did notice OCaml (Objective Caml) at the top of the list -- right up there with C. And, in my investigation, I discovered the OCaml can be run as a script interpreter _and_ that it can also compile byte-code and native code! Wow -- just what I've been looking for. But for some strange reason, I am still drawn to Ruby. Could someone please offer a comparison between OCaml and Ruby? Thank you all for your time. Best, Terry