From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) Date: 2002-02-13T10:32:51+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby performance on the Language Shootout In article , Dan Sugalski wrote: >At 8:12 AM +0900 2/13/02, Phil Tomson wrote: >>I haven't taken a look at the Great Computer Language Shootout page for >>about a year - I checked it out today. About a year ago, Ruby's >>performance ranked between Perl's and Python's (with Python at the low >>end). Now it looks like Python beats Ruby pretty consistently. Is this >>because Python is bytecode interpreted and they've made improvements to >>their VM? > >FWIW, bytecode interpretation doesn't really matter for speed >purposes. I'd look elsewhere for any speed issues. >-- > Dan Can you give us any more details? Is it true then that interpretation via walking an AST (as Ruby does) is as fast or faster than compiling to a bytecode and running it through a VM? (since you don't have the extra step of creating bytecode, it would seem to be potentially faster) -if so, then why are bytecode VMs so popular? Phil