From: "Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)" <shot@...>
Date: 2007-01-17T19:00:06+09:00
Subject: Intensive computing: Ruby? Ruby/C? Pure C++?

Hello, ruby-talk. I have a question about choosing between Ruby, Ruby
with C extensions (InlineRuby, ruby2c, etc.) and pure C++. I'll try to
keep it short and to the point; thanks in advance for any answers, and
of course I'm more than happy to clarify/extend the below if needed.

Background: I'm a PhD student at Warsaw University of Technology and
I need to write a project that's going to be fairly intensive in both
computing and memory usage (symbolic functional decomposition of FSMs
for FPGA implementation); in particular, the project will implement
a lot of set operations and graph colouring. I like Ruby a lot, and
the project has to *work* first, but ultimately it has to be efficient
in the end. I don't know a lot about C/C++ other than the basic classes
I took years ago (i.e., I'll have to learn C/C++ from scratch anyway).

The question: in my case, which approach seems to make most sense?

1. Pure Ruby. This will most probably not be an option; my gut
feeling is that pure Ruby will end up being *way* too slow and
memory-inefficient. Still, definitely the fun approach, and actually
maybe the fastest prototyping.

2. Ruby with C extensions. Code in Ruby first, then optimise the slow
parts one after another. This is tempting (mmm, Ruby...), but I'm
not sure how viable; if I'm going to have to rewrite 90% in C anyway,
I might as well start with C++ (again, only a gut feeling).

3. Pure C++. I have to learn C/C++ anyway almost certainly (for point
2 above), so maybe trying to have fun and going with Ruby is not the
best way this time, and I should simply install CDT, stock on C++
tutorials and be a brave, if sad, person?

Note: My supervisor doesn't know Ruby one bit and writes everything in
C++, so he would not be too happy with 1 and 2; still, it's my PhD, and
he's an open-minded person, so if I'm sure about either 1 or 2 being
viable I should be able to go with Ruby.

Thanks a lot for your time and in advance for any responses. :)

-- Shot
-- 
It would be nice to think that one day a language will come along
which manages to add powerful features without making the code
look like it's been rendered with the wrong character encoding.
   -- Sam Newman on Ruby's overuse of different parenthesis types