From: Thomas E Enebo <enebo@...>
Date: 2005-08-13T00:00:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Performance

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, Bradley Kite defenestrated me:
>
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm a relatively new Ruby programmer, I am curious as to what Ruby is
> trying to achieve that other scripting languages do not already offer (Apart
> from the syntactic differences of yet another scripting language, that is).
> The reason I ask is that it must offer something that is worth a lot 
> considering it runs twice as slowly as Perl (see below).

(I apologize in advance to any other Perl fans in advance)

  If you think that Ruby's language does not offer A LOT over Perl's
syntax, then you may want to go back to Perl.  I came from the Perl
camp and I have not looked back (other than reading the crazy Exegesis
writings -- which makes me even happier to be using Ruby).  I loved
Perl and used it for over a decade.  I used to read people asking the
same performance questions you are asking now to the perl lists, but it 
was about why you would use a scripting language over a real one(tm) :) 

  I think performance is largely a red herring.  Most scripts I have
written have not even had a performance attribute.  If it took 2 or 3
times longer it would not have mattered.  Usually, anytime performance
did matter it was a matter of an external force...Like accessing a database.
I think few times I have written scripts which took 8+ hours to process 
data.  In all cases this was one time conversion and a 16 hour run time
would not have mattered.  

  It sounds like Ruby's performance will get better with Rite (Ruby 2).  Even 
if it didn't I am more than happy with how it performs now.  In other words
it does not seem slow when I work with it.

> [micro-benchmark removed for brevity]

-- 
+ http://www.tc.umn.edu/~enebo +---- mailto:enebo@acm.org ----+
| Thomas E Enebo, Protagonist  | "Luck favors the prepared    |
|                              |  mind." -Louis Pasteur       |