From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-06-03T03:44:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Speed of Ruby program != Speed of Ruby language (was Re: Zed and Luis drop the bomb on Ruby's poor performance)


On Jun 1, 2006, at 6:56 PM, Dave Howell wrote:

> I find that assertion to be quite ludicrous. A C string is a null- 
> terminated byte sequence. I've happily never had to use to any  
> great extent any other language that didn't effectively insulate me  
> from any need to track the terminal null (the vast majority don't  
> even *use* that, but rather store the length as an integer at the  
> front of the string), or that allowed my code to inadvertantly  
> overwrite the terminal null, thus turning a string into an object  
> of indefinite length, sucking down whatever random bytes lay beyond  
> the end of the actual string bytes until it found some other "00x0"  
> in memory.

Um, he was saying how they are _implemented_ in C.


> You're going to have to provide some rather compelling evidence  
> before I give that opinion much credence. Ruby and Perl are "old  
> friends," too. Nevertheless, if there are aspects of Ruby that came  
> from these languages, and I cannot learn them directly and  
> exclusively via Ruby, that just says to me that the Ruby  
> documentation still needs work. When I decided that AppleScript  
> (XCode and AppleScript Studio notwithstanding) were inherently  
> inadequate for the programming I wanted to do, I selected Ruby in  
> part because of how much NOT like Perl it is.
>

He's not saying ruby was influenced by C (like it was by perl) he is  
saying C is the platform upon which ruby is built.