From: Jacob Fugal <lukfugl@...>
Date: 2006-09-12T23:51:22+09:00
Subject: Re: The economics of a slow but productive Ruby

On 9/12/06, ara.t.howard@noaa.gov <ara.t.howard@noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Jacob Fugal wrote:
> > 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.

I accept that those scripts will definitely depend on CPU. Those
aren't the types of scripts I envision as "sysadmin scripts", though.
In my brain (which could easily be wrong, since I've never been a
sysadmin), programs consume resources and the sysadmin -- and his
scripts -- are meant to manage the resources so that they *can* be
consumed by other programs.

Jacob Fugal