From: Ryan Leavengood <mrcode@...>
Date: 2001-10-30T04:50:28+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23744] Re: Some inspirations from REBOL

> > Maybe great, but very slow. Why not make it a standard C-extension
and
> > distribute it with Ruby? It would run on any platform.
> 
> Well, there's already ruby/zlib.

Which is something that requires a compiler and the zlib library and
headers for.  Even on Debian Linux I couldn't compile it because I
didn't have the zlib headers (I assume.)  I didn't get any errors from
the install but it just didn't work.  Sure, I could have done "apt-cache
search zlib" to find out what the package name was for the zlib headers
then "apt-get install" to install that, but that is quite a bit of work
to get a package working.

Now try to do the same on Windows.  Sure I know 90% of the Ruby
community hates Windows (including me), but regardless a lot of people
still use that OS, especially at work (like me.)  So Windows support in
Ruby and its libraries is really important to get Ruby accepted by the
masses.  So assuming that everyone has a compiler and header files for
every little C library out there is not going to work.

So in this case I decided to see about writing zlib in pure Ruby so
people could just download it and get to work instead of spending all
their time compiling and installing.  I think for small standardized
libraries like this it is worth it.

I spoke about performance in another mail, but the main point is if we
make Ruby really fast then the whole C vs Ruby performance excuse can be
forgotten.  As others have mentioned, if David Simmons can make the
speed of Smallscript on AOS within the range of 1-2X of C, then I'm sure
we can do the same with Ruby.  Of course this is David's forte, so I'm
sure we less experienced developers will need guidance from gurus like
him, but we can still make it happen.  I really want this performance
excuse stamped out! :)

Ryan Leavengood