From: khaines@...
Date: 2006-07-15T06:28:12+09:00
Subject: Re: How to speed up ruby and make it as fast as possible

On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Jamal Mazrui wrote:

> Python) and Perl (version 5) cannot change its messiness, I believe Ruby
> is capable of reaching a comparable level of execution speed.  Solving a
> problem is usually better accomplished by acknowledging it openly rather
> than causing people to feel like they have committed heresy or stupidity
> by raising it.

I don't think that's it.  The common speed complaint on this list stems 
from someone looking at some benchmark or another.  They see Ruby places 
behind language X, so they complain about it.

But performance is really far more complex than that.  For example, 
consider PHP4.  On paper, with benchmarks, it is faster than Ruby, and 
simple benchmarks put it much faster than Ruby for the things PHP is good 
at -- dynamic web content.

But...go download a PHP MVC framework like CakePHP (which is a pretty nice 
piece of PHP).  Now compare it to a Ruby framework.  Suddenly the 
benchmark numbers start changing, dramatically.  My tests with IOWA show a 
speed difference of about 4x Ruby's favor when comparing CakePHP under 
PHP4 to IOWA under Ruby 1.8.4.  So which language is truly faster?

I think a person is hard pressed to find an application which will perform 
acceptably under Perl or Python, but which will not under Ruby.

So while additional speed is nice, I have yet to be convinced that it is 
the big deal that some people keep trying to make it.


Kirk Haines