With respect, I do not agree with the argument that one should use an
external language to get speed in Ruby. I do not know C and have no
desire to learn it. I program in Ruby partly to avoid the low level
details that C programming demands.
For the most part my Ruby programs are fast enough, but there are
noticeable slow points that cannot simply be solved by a better
algorithm. From my reading, it seems that Python is the main competitor
to Ruby at this time. I prefer the syntax of Ruby, but the performance
of Python is a significant point in its favor. The more that Ruby can
eliminate this gap, the better it will fare in competition, adoption,
and third party support–in my opinion…
Regards,
Jamal
On Tue, 23 May 2006, Jamal M. wrote:
With respect, I do not agree with the argument that one should use an
external language to get speed in Ruby. I do not know C and have no
desire to learn it. I program in Ruby partly to avoid the low level
details that C programming demands.
i appreciate the sentiment. however, saying you don’t want to learn C,
but
that you want fast code is a bit like saying you want to run a marathon
but
only want to train 30 minutes three times per week - it just won’t
happen.
For the most part my Ruby programs are fast enough, but there are noticeable
slow points that cannot simply be solved by a better algorithm.
here’s a challenge: show us one and see what the list can do. so far
i’ve
never seen a case where posting to the list didn’t yield huge
performance
gains. seriously, you’ll be doing the community a favour by showing
such a
concrete example - see what you can distill into a short example and
post it.
we need hard examples to work with - otherwise we are all waisting our
time
and energy.
reading, it seems that Python is the main competitor to Ruby at this time.
I prefer the syntax of Ruby, but the performance of Python is a significant
point in its favor. The more that Ruby can eliminate this gap, the better
it will fare in competition, adoption, and third party support–in my
opinion…
narray (numerical ruby lib) is faster than pythons. gsl is the same.
image-magick is the same. what specific speed difference are you
referring
to?
not trying to be difficult - let’s just work with something real.
kind regards.
-a