From: Ryan McGovern <mcgoverp@...>
Date: 2006-07-15T01:29:30+09:00
Subject: Re: How to speed up ruby and make it as fast as possible

A university should not be the source of the languages you know.  I'm 
sure you know this since you are learning ruby.  BUT a large amount of 
programming is not just doing something in a way that you like, but 
dealing with the tools that are given to you.  the fact is ruby or any 
interperated language will never be as fast as C and java's vm will 
never be as fast as C either.  Sometimes C is not fast enough that is 
why MOST games use large portions of in line assembly for some specific 
functions.  I'm not saying dont make java or ruby or perl as fast as 
possible but there is an upper boundary in speed.  The reason Ruby and 
Perl exists is because processing speed is becoming a easy to find 
commodity for most applications a far cry from the 8086 or 800 days.

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
>
>
>
>