From: Lloyd Linklater <lloyd@2live4.com>
Date: 2007-05-09T04:15:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Performance - LOW ?

conker wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> It's sad to see ruby at the bottom of this list:
> 
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all
> 
> Any thoughts on this?

I find no value to this list.  First, I remember when the same kinds of 
people tried to say that Native C++ code ran faster than Delphi, but 
every test showed Delphi faster.  I even remember when I was doing dBASE 
for windows, that there was an arrSort() (array sort) method that 
crashed when you opened too many items through it.  One of the Borland 
engineers wrote a sorting algorithm which not only ran without crashing 
but was 150+ times faster than the native C++ code used.  DBASE is an 
interpreted language also.

Just having an interpreted language is not enough to say that it will be 
slow.  This site does not say just what the test is or how it is coded 
for each language.  There are ways to code that will change the speed of 
execution dramatically.

There was another thread about running something that requires 10 msec 
time slicing that ruby was able to do reliably. 
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/106209#new  This shows that things can 
be run fairly fast.  One poster said that windows has a 15 msec time 
slice.  For Ruby to work at 10 msecs is fast.

Also, the bottom line is not how many times you can run

1000000.times
  p (123.456 / 987.654).to_s

in a second.

If it is fast enough, and it usually is, then there are other 
considerations that are far more important.  Can you get it running 
reliably in the time allotted?  It is easily maintained?  Is it 
extensible and otherwise easily modified and updated?  There is more to 
the value of a language than running a single floating point calculation 
a bazillion times.  As long as it works fast enough to keep users from 
getting annoyed, it is fast enough.

To put things like that in a chart is for people that do not think 
further than just the pretty pictures at what lies behind.  The people 
that support and want Ruby have far more to consider and want far more 
from their programming language than that.

Fwiw & imho


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