From: lalit_pant@... (Lalit Pant)
Date: 2003-09-22T09:48:09+09:00
Subject: Performance: Ruby vs Java

I'm a newcomer to Ruby, and thought I would write a little
brute-force-search program to see how Ruby compares to Java -
performance wise. The results surprised me (I was hoping Ruby would
fare a lot better than it did!). On my WinXP box (AthlonXP 1800+,
768Meg RAM), the Ruby program takes 1min 50secs to complete, while a
similar java program takes 0.6 secs.

Here are the programs:

Ruby (ruby 1.8.0 (2003-08-04) [i386-mswin32]):
def isPrime(n)
  for i in 1..n-1 do
    for j in 1..n-1 do
      if i * j == n then
        return false
      end
    end
  end
  return true
end

puts isPrime(2)
puts isPrime(4)
puts isPrime(7)
puts isPrime(25)
puts isPrime(400003)

Java (HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_01-b06, mixed mode)):
public class Prime
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    Prime p = new Prime();
    System.out.println(p.isPrime(2));
    System.out.println(p.isPrime(4));
    System.out.println(p.isPrime(7));
    System.out.println(p.isPrime(25));
    System.out.println(p.isPrime(400003));
  }
  
  private boolean isPrime(int n)
  {
    for (int i = 1; i < n; i++)
    {
      for (int j = 1; j < n; j++)
      {
        if (i*j == n)
        {
          return false;
        }      
      }
    }
    return true;
  }
}

Kindly note that the isPrime() method above is not meant to be the
most efficient way of finding primes!

Any ideas on why i'm seeing such a big difference in performance?