From: ara.t.howard@... Date: 2006-09-12T23:18:06+09:00 Subject: Re: The economics of a slow but productive Ruby On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Jacob Fugal wrote: > On 9/11/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: >> Jacob Fugal wrote: >> > [1] It's interesting to note however that 67% of that figure is still >> > in paid salaries, rather than the cost of the hardware itself. If >> > you've got a super sysadmin who can manage 100 boxes (and you better >> > be paying them at least 80K if they are that super), the hardware >> > budget will scale a lot better. There's a lot to be said for getting >> > your hands on a good sysadmin... >> >> Ah, but does SuperSysAdmin have to use a slow scripting language? > > As others have mentioned, the scripts used by sysadmins aren't really > CPU intensive nor too dependent on the host language speed. So it's a > moot point. :) i wouldn't agree with that. we just started a trio of ruby scripts running across three machines which coordinated processing of 30 satellite years of data. they are going to peg the machines near 50% for 3-5 months. it may not be common but, where huge data sets are involved, something as trivial as 'unpacking and moving some data' may take a considerable amount of logic and cpu. 2 cts. -a -- in order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt. -- wei wu wei