From: Micah Carrick <email@...>
Date: 2007-06-05T15:36:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Another beginner question

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback.

- Micah Carrick

  Developer - http://www.micahcarrick.com
  GTK+ Forums - http://www.gtkforums.com



Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Jun 4, 2007, at 22:43, Micah Carrick wrote:
>
>> Sorry if my "newbie" questions are excessive. I promise that if/when 
>> I start getting on my feet with Ruby programming I will contribute 
>> back to the learning process 10-fold. That's how I role.
>>
>> Simple question:
>>
>> I was turned on to Ruby via Ruby on Rails at the RailsConf here in 
>> Portland via a friend. I was told there's a "plugin" (I'm assuming 
>> for rails) for inline C code. What I'm wondering-- is as an 
>> interpreted language, if there is a chunk of code that needs to 
>> execute very quickly, is there a way to have C code that's compiled? 
>> Perhaps a library?
>
> There's a gem called RubyInline that does this (and C++ and Fortran).
>
>> So, let's say I have a little GTK+ GUI that I wrote in Ruby to save 
>> time, but it has some process-intensive routine-- could I write that 
>> routine in C and have it as a compiled binary and run within my Ruby 
>> code?
>
> RubyInline does all the build steps for you, you just write the C, 
> save the file, and run your tests to make sure it works.  Just as if 
> you'd written regular Ruby.
>
> (Of course, you should have regular ruby, profile it, refactor for 
> speed, then write in C when you can't get any more speed out of Ruby.)
>
>