From: Ola Bini <ola.bini@...>
Date: 2006-07-15T01:25:05+09:00
Subject: Re: How to speed up ruby and make it as fast as possible

Jamal Mazrui wrote:
> In answer to the multiple messages recommending that I learn C or
> Assembler as the solution for performance, it appears that you did not
> read my lips:  I want to use Ruby, not a typically tedious, often
> verbose, yet also cryptic strongly-typed language!  I have read
> tutorials on such languages before and found their nature to be counter
> to my desire for rapid application development.  I understand that no
> single language is superior in all criteria, and that trade-offs exist
> between ease of development and speed of execution.  I just want a
> better combination of these and believe it is possible for the Ruby
> language to progress in this way.  I think the more that others also
> express this interest, rather than deflecting attention away from Ruby,
> the more likely that our community will find the means to deliver these
> advancements.
> 
> The trend in universities, by the way, is away from teaching native C.
> Instead, Java and C# for the .NET platform are taking over.  That argues
> against learning C specifically to compensate for Ruby's weakness.  If I
> were to invest in the hundreds of hours to become facile in a strongly
> typed language, C# would be the one most likely to benefit my
> productivity and career.  (As much as I like Ruby, it is a means to an
> end for me, not an end in itself.)
> 
> Jamal
> 
> 

One, Rite seems to be what you're looking for, and it will come in time. 
  C is the best solution until then.

Btw, C have mostly never been teached at universities, since the point 
of learning programming languages at Uni's is to take a look at concepts 
of programming, not learn something that can be used professionally. The 
reasons that C isn't used to teach programming concepts is the same 
reason that makes it efficient enough to be really fast.

If you're just interested in speed, have you thought about looking at 
other very high level languages? OCaml is wicked fast and statically 
typed, yet at a mostly higher abstraction level than even Ruby.


-- 
  Ola Bini (http://ola-bini.blogspot.com)
  JvYAML, RbYAML, JRuby and Jatha contributor
  System Developer, Karolinska Institutet (http://www.ki.se)
  OLogix Consulting (http://www.ologix.com)

  "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.