From: Charles O Nutter <headius@...>
Date: 2006-07-27T06:00:26+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C

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On 7/26/06, Ron M <rm_rails@cheapcomplexdevices.com> wrote:
>
> Charles O Nutter wrote:
> > I'll lob a couple of grenades and then duck for cover.
> >
> > - Write it in C is as valid as write it in Java (as someone else
> > mentioned).
>
> Not really.  In C you can quite easily use inline assembly
> to do use your chips MMX/SSE/VIS/AltiVec extensions and if
> you need more, interface to your GPU if you want to use it
> as a coprocessor.
>
> I don't know of any good way of doing those in Java except
> by writing native extensions in C or directly with an assembler.
>

So you're saying that when writing an extension to Ruby in C you can also
manually write assembly to speed up specific aspects of your code, and that
when writing an extrenion in Java you'd have to manually write assembly to
speed up specific aspect of your code? The great hassle of writing Java
Native Interface code aside (which is really a one-time cost) what exactly
is the difference here?

On any platform, Java included, you can eventually call out to C code to do
some processor specific or really performance-intensive task. Java doesn't
make it as easy as Ruby, but it also performs quite a bit better than Ruby
for most cases. It's only in rare cases that you actually need to write
native code to make a Java app perform well. However in the Ruby world, that
tends to be the stock answer...if it's not fast enough, give up on Ruby!

I can absolutely appreciate the gains shown by moving targetted pieces of
code from Ruby to C. In those examples, Ruby's power is grossly
underutilized, so the conversion to a less feature-rich language with less
overhead makes a great deal of sense. However I would challenge the Ruby
community at large to expect more from Ruby proper before giving up the
dream of highly-performant Ruby code and plunging into the C.

-- 
Charles Oliver Nutter @ headius.blogspot.com
JRuby Developer @ www.jruby.org
Application Architect @ www.ventera.com

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