From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2005-01-24T07:26:35+09:00
Subject: Re: looking at ruby...

Hi --

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Paris Sinclair wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Eric Hodel wrote:
>
>> On 22 Jan 2005, at 23:57, Lothar Scholz wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello Eric,
>>> 
>>> EH> Ruby is fast enough
>>> EH> for everybody here, and its fast enough for basecamphq.com and
>>> EH> 43things.com.
>>> 
>>> But since the ruby community is still very very small this is maybe
>>> not a very clever answer.
>> 
>> Commonly, it is the truth.  By omitting my full response though, you 
>> misrepresent my statement.
>> 
>> Writing C extensions in Ruby is hardly more difficult than writing plain 
>> Ruby code, and with a tool like RubyInline, it only gets easier.  Beacuse 
>> of this, many people find no problem using Ruby despite it being slower 
>> than other languages.
>
> So you're saying the common truth is that Ruby is fast enough, but only if 
> you don't use Ruby but instead C?
>
> I think it discourages the community from focusing on things like bytecode,

Don't worry -- plenty of people are focusing on things like bytecode
:-)

> which could solve the problem. Because you're speaking as if using C *is* 
> using Ruby. When instead it's a different language that can be used to work 
> around the slowness.
>
> It is better than to go the road of tcl, IMO. Denying that slowness is bad, 
> and so never fixing it.

The road of Ruby is even better: denying that slowness is bad, *AND*
fixing it.  So everyone is happy.


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net