From: Jason Creighton <androflux@...>
Date: 2003-09-17T03:52:03+09:00
Subject: Re: performance and style advice requested

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 07:40:34 +0900
Ben Giddings <bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> wrote:

> (In another post) Alex Martelli wrote:
> >> While I doubt you should compare these languages on performance merits
> > *blink* why not, pray?  While clarity, productivity, simplicity, and so on,
> > are surely all crucial attributes in a language, what's wrong with wanting
> > to ascertain how it performs (when used in the best/fastest way, at least)
> > in typical problems in one's domains of interest...?
> 
> I don't think that it's wrong to compare the speed of the languages.  I 
> just wouldn't be surprised if Python is faster by a healthy margin, 
> especially for a very simple numerical program like this.  In Ruby, 
> *everything* is an object, including numbers.  This has certain 
> advantages, but definitely carries some speed penalties.

Err...isn't everything an object in Python as well?

~$ python
Python 2.3 (#1, Aug  4 2003, 08:45:40) 
[GCC 3.2.2 (CRUX)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> n = 5.5
>>> dir(n)
['__abs__', '__add__', '__class__', '__cmp__', '__coerce__',
'__delattr__', '__div__', '__divmod__', '__doc__', '__float__',
'__floordiv__', '__getattribute__', '__getnewargs__', '__hash__',
'__init__', '__int__', '__long__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__neg__',
'__new__', '__nonzero__', '__pos__', '__pow__', '__radd__', '__rdiv__',
'__rdivmod__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__',
'__rfloordiv__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__rpow__', '__rsub__',
'__rtruediv__', '__setattr__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__truediv__']
>>> n.__add__(4)
9.5
>>> n.__int__()
5

> By using a scripting language rather than assembly or C, you've already 
> decided you're willing to sacrifice some performance for ease of use.  I 
> expect that both Perl and Python would beat Ruby in nearly any 
> benchmark, but I find Ruby much easier to use than both.  For tasks 
> where a scripting language is appropriate, I choose Ruby.

Yes, I have found that both Perl and Python seem to be faster than Ruby
for running the code, but Ruby is faster for writing it. :)

Jason Creighton