From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2006-07-15T02:12:52+09:00
Subject: Re: How to speed up ruby and make it as fast as possible

Ola Bini wrote:

> 
> 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.

C was taught at my college as part of a general program related to 
operating systems.  It was the second programming language I learned, 
and while I do no C coding now, being able to read C is very helpful if 
you want to understand Ruby mechanics.   This can help you write faster 
Ruby code.

The reasons for, and value of, learning C have nothing to do with what 
goes on at universities; I would think that the rise in emphasis on Java 
and .Net would suggest that many schools are more interested in 
vocational training than computer science education.

I understand why someone might not want to learn C and why they would 
prefer to do all coding in Ruby or some other language that offers 
higher abstractions.   On the other hand, one should maybe know at least 
enough about C so as not to mistakenly call it a strongly-typed language.

I Rite, like Ruby, is written in C, so one way or another C will make 
Ruby faster.  Who actually writes that C code is another matter.  Maybe 
that's another reason to learn C: to help with Rite.


-- 
James Britt

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little
  time to change that here and there."
  - Richard P. Feynman