From: Robert Dober Date: 2008-03-25T23:25:53+09:00 Subject: Re: Pros and Cons of Ruby vs JRuby for GUI On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Victor Reyes wrote: > Although I have been using Ruby for awhile, I am really a beginner as I use > it very sporadically and depend much on my books and the forum. > In the recent past, while trying to learn a GUI tool, I tried writing simple > GUI appls using ruby-gnome2, WxRuby, QtRuby, FXRuby, Tk and WideStudio. Only > the last one gives you dragANDdrop capabilities, although the widgets looks > and feel are not appealing. Then I heard that *JRuby* has built-in GUI > support via *swing*. To confuse me even more (and believe me it does not > take much for that), now I heard about a tool named *clutter* which is > supposedly very nice. > I am actually looking for *quick* and *easy *way to create a GUI appl. > > My questions are: > I am sure you will get much more prominent answers but here are some first thoughts > What are the pros and cons of *Ruby* vs *JRuby*? > How far behind "regular" *Ruby* *JRuby* is? Not behind at all, with the exceptions of continuations IIRC. > Since *Ruby* is written in *C* and *JRuby* in *Java* isn't *Ruby* faster > than *JRuby*? Not necessarily, the C implementation is a naïve interpretation of the AST, while Java byte code is highly optimized. Ruby's dynamic nature takes many of these optimizations away, but Charles has made incredible effort for speed. They are about the same right now, but be aware that C-Ruby will not get much faster while JRuby might still get some very large speedup. Right Charles? > Other than *swing* in *JRuby* is there any advantage of using *JRuby* > over *Ruby? Swing is all but an advantage, unless you have a really cool tool to generate a Swing interface, it is APITN to write swing GUIS. But very often JRuby is considered the backdoor entrance of Ruby into a company that disallows the red gem the main entrance. If this does not apply to you other advantages depend very much on your needs, GUIs are known AFAIK. My tiebreaker would be the knowledge and love you have for Java. > *I guess this is related to question 1. > Waiting myself for what the Gurus have to say ;) Cheers Robert -- http://ruby-smalltalk.blogspot.com/ --- Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein