I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: execution speed is apparently
a sore spot in the Ruby community, one that results in undue
defensiveness and shooting the messenger! From my reading, Perl and
Python are the primary competitors to Ruby among programming languages
at this time. I prefer the elegance of Ruby, and want it to be chosen
over the others when potential users are making such a decision.
Whereas Python cannot change its indentation requirement (and remain
Python) and Perl (version 5) cannot change its messiness, I believe Ruby
is capable of reaching a comparable level of execution speed. Solving a
problem is usually better accomplished by acknowledging it openly rather
than causing people to feel like they have committed heresy or stupidity
by raising it.
Regards,
Jamal
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006, Jamal M. wrote:
Python) and Perl (version 5) cannot change its messiness, I believe Ruby
is capable of reaching a comparable level of execution speed. Solving a
problem is usually better accomplished by acknowledging it openly rather
than causing people to feel like they have committed heresy or stupidity
by raising it.
I don’t think that’s it. The common speed complaint on this list stems
from someone looking at some benchmark or another. They see Ruby places
behind language X, so they complain about it.
But performance is really far more complex than that. For example,
consider PHP4. On paper, with benchmarks, it is faster than Ruby, and
simple benchmarks put it much faster than Ruby for the things PHP is
good
at – dynamic web content.
But…go download a PHP MVC framework like CakePHP (which is a pretty
nice
piece of PHP). Now compare it to a Ruby framework. Suddenly the
benchmark numbers start changing, dramatically. My tests with IOWA show
a
speed difference of about 4x Ruby’s favor when comparing CakePHP under
PHP4 to IOWA under Ruby 1.8.4. So which language is truly faster?
I think a person is hard pressed to find an application which will
perform
acceptably under Perl or Python, but which will not under Ruby.
So while additional speed is nice, I have yet to be convinced that it is
the big deal that some people keep trying to make it.
Kirk H.
Jamal M. wrote:
than causing people to feel like they have committed heresy or stupidity
by raising it.
The real point is: Speed is only a problem if you think it is.
I’ve used Ruby for more than six years, and have never had a
problem with speed.
What annoys me is people getting in my face and saying that
I’m “ignoring the problem.” I’m not. For my purposes so far,
there isn’t a problem.
Everyone, nyself included, would like Ruby to be faster.
But I don’t condone alarmists running around squawking about
their own problems as if they were everybody’s problems.
Some people find Ruby “unusable” because of its speed. Those
people should use something else until Ruby is fast enough.
(And/or they should contribute to making Ruby faster.)
However: Many, many people don’t find Ruby “unusably slow.”
As I said, I have never had an application where Ruby’s
speed was a real problem. (Once, four years ago, I had an
app that took several minutes to run. But it needed to run
very rarely. If I were running it several times a day, then
it might be an issue.)
So in short, anyone is welcome to consider Ruby “slow” in
a given context. But don’t say that it’s “slow” in every
context, or that there is a “problem” that I’m “ignoring.”
Hal
On 2006-07-14, Hal F. [email protected] wrote:
The real point is: Speed is only a problem if you think it is.
Matz thinks it is. He’s said so elsewhere in this thread.
I’ve used Ruby for more than six years, and have never had a
problem with speed.
It’s good that you have not had this problem.
What annoys me is people getting in my face and saying that
I’m “ignoring the problem.” I’m not.
If someone asks “this Ruby script is too slow for my purposes, how can
it be faster” and is only told “write it in C”, I think they can
reasonably say that their problem is being ignored.
Some people find Ruby “unusable” because of its speed. Those
people should use something else until Ruby is fast enough.
(And/or they should contribute to making Ruby faster.)
Which is why I asked if YARV is the way to go. If I knew that I could
see if I could help. But (/me sighs) nobody answered that. Anyway
I’ve just downloaded and benchmarked YARV and it’s very impressive.
Many times faster on most benchmarks, merely comparable on a few.
If anyone has tips on helping YARV, I’m all ears.
Regards,
Jeremy H.