From: Srinivas Jonnalagadda <srinivas.j@...>
Date: 2005-11-08T12:14:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Investigating Ruby - key limitations ?

mortench wrote:
> I have been looking at the Ruby programming language recently. I like
> Ruby and would like to use it myself but I see some several key
> limitations that hinders use of Ruby in mainstream projects (and makes
> it hard for me to recommend it for my customers):
> 
>    1. Slow and very primitve VM - no jit, vm comparable to java 10
> years ago.

I would like to comment only on this point.

Everyday, I process files of the order of 1 GB in size.  The
processing includes some computations, aggregations and rule-based
rewrites.  On my desktop system (2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM), it takes
between 13 and 15 minutes.  I think it quite acceptable!

It has taken three iterations for the code to arrive here; but, it is
still pure Ruby (i.e., without any C extensions).  As another answerer
said, a key factor is the choice of appropriate algorithms for your
requirement.

Best regards,

JS

>    2. No native thread support - this is increasingly a problem as
> threading and multi-core technology becomes the norm (*)
>    3. No (first-class) unicode support (*)
>    4. Poor development enviroments compared to .NET/Java - however this
> is slowly getting better - f.x. RDT is quite useful.
> 
> For more info see my blog at:
> http://mortench.blogspot.com/2005/11/investigating-ruby.html
> 
> This is not a flame-invitation, but I would be interested in hearing
> constructive feedback from more experienced Ruby developers to address
> wrongs/shortcommings in my analysis.