From: Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@...>
Date: 2012-05-06T20:39:27+09:00
Subject: Re: break down of differences between interpreters?

Performance is not the only issue when selecting an interpreter.

We do use Jruby in a few places, but only when Jruby provides a
feature that is too difficult in the normal version.

Why don't we use it everywhere?

1) We dont want to heft around the massive JRE
2) Some gems do not work with Jruby and the alternatives are awkward
3) The performance improvement isn't that great (network and database
latency tend to overshadow everything)

Even if Jruby was consistently twice as fast as the normal interpreter
it will only amount to a < 10% improvement in the overall application
performance for the sort of apps we create.

The biggest improvements in performance for our applications come from
better algorithms and caching :)