Hi Justin,
I am glad that Ruby 2 is being worked on, which will bring speed and
other improvements. What prompted my original statement on this issue
was a message that simply told someone to use C when the question was
asked about ways to speed up Ruby programs. I think a more constructive
response to such questions begins by acknowledging this current problem
in Ruby, partly to reassure him or her that the problem is not just a
matter of programming deficiency. The response might then remind one of
the ease of development benefits that one gets in return, as well as
summarizing projects underway to improve performance as well. I think
it’s fine to explain how C may be used for time-sensitive parts of an
application if one already knows C. In general, however, I do not think
it is reasonable to expect someone to learn a fundamentally different,
low level language for this purpose. It is definitely not constructive
to demean their programming interest and skills if they do not know or
want to learn C.
Regards,
Jamal
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Jamal M. wrote:
Hi Justin,
I am glad that Ruby 2 is being worked on, which will bring speed and
other improvements. What prompted my original statement on this issue
was a message that simply told someone to use C when the question was
asked about ways to speed up Ruby programs. I think a more constructive
response to such questions begins by acknowledging this current problem
in Ruby, partly to reassure him or her that the problem is not just a
You insist that this is a “problem”.
But you neither qualify or quantify the problem. Why is current Ruby
performance a problem, and at what level of performance does it cease to
be a problem?
Kirk H.
[email protected] wrote:
You insist that this is a “problem”.
The Goal of all programs and languages is to execute in O(0) Time 
Jamal,
Stop being a troll.
Ruby is comparable in speed to other interpreted languages. If you’d
like to speed up your code profiling your code and cleaning up
algorithmic bottlenecks is the simplest way. After that, optimizing in
C is the way to go. You don’t have to do it this way, but it is one of
the few answers to the problem and is a valid response to the
question.