From: Chad Perrin Date: 2007-10-04T04:34:31+09:00 Subject: Re: Recent Criticism about Ruby (Scalability, etc.) On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 02:15:09AM +0900, Brian Adkins wrote: > On Oct 3, 9:19 am, Charles Oliver Nutter > wrote: > > I find this perspective puzzling. In most large datacenters, the big > > cost of operation is neither the cost of the servers nor the cost of the > > development time to put code on them, it's the peripheral electricity, > > administration and cooling costs once the application written must be > > deployed to thousands of users. > > "Most"? If you define "large data center" as the very top echelon, > then maybe, but even then I'd like to see some data. I expect the vast > majority (all?) of readers of this ng will be involved in scenarios in > which the cost of development time far exceeds electricity or server > costs for their deployed applications. > > Part of what kept me from getting involved in Ruby sooner than I did > was my erroneous view that I wanted to be using technology that would > be sufficient to run Amazon, Ebay, etc. Little did it matter that I > wasn't pursuing that type of project - analogous to the fact that > most, if not all, Hummer drivers will never encounter serious off road > or combat situations :) That's okay, though, because most civilian Hummers are unsuited to offroading and combat situations. > > I'm all for increasing the performance and scalability of Ruby, but I > think the productivity gains still outweigh the extra runtime costs > for most projects. Agreed -- for the vast majority of projects in the range for which Ruby is typically used, as compared with languages with execution performance that is actually sufficiently better than Ruby's to bother measuring the difference. I mean, sure, it's fun to compare benchmarks between Python and Ruby (for instance), but if you actually need a performance boost you should be comparing Ruby with C instead (or comparing Python with C, as your tastes in productivity-enhancing languages may lead you). -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] They always say that when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. I always wonder -- isn't the lemonade going to suck if life doesn't give you any sugar?