From: Ryan Paul <segphault@...>
Date: 2004-06-12T14:38:37+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby and mustard

On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 08:47:52 -0600, Ara.T.Howard wrote:

> 
> what do you do when ruby just won't quite cut the mustard?
...
> when you want to write something faster than ruby, but want basic (IMHO)
> tools at your disposal like hashes, good string handling, exceptions, etc.
> what is the way to go?

It may not be a practical solution now, because it will take you some time
to learn, but you might want to look into using OCaml in the future. OCaml
is a powerful functional language that can produce native binary
executables on a number of platforms. OCaml execution speed is extremely
impressive. In just about every scenario, the speed of an OCaml program
exceeds that of a comparable c++ program, and there some situations where
Ocaml execution speed may even exceed that of a comperable c program.

Ocaml is also a good choice, because it is object oriented, and it
provides a lot of really useful/powerful extras that vastly simplify code.
Hashes are available via the Hashtbl module, and type-homogenous lists are
a native part of the language. OCaml has a map function, and handles lists
with incredible grace.

-- SegPhault