# Re: Zed and Luis drop the bomb on Ruby's poor performance

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-zed-and-luis-drop-the-bomb-on-rubys-poor-performance/95132>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 22, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-zed-and-luis-drop-the-bomb-on-rubys-poor-performance/95132 "2006-05-22T19:00:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jamal86](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ebca7d/32.png) [@jamal86](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamal86)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-zed-and-luis-drop-the-bomb-on-rubys-poor-performance/95132/1 "2006-05-22T19:00:27Z")

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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

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jamal86](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ebca7d/32.png) [@jamal86](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jamal86)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-zed-and-luis-drop-the-bomb-on-rubys-poor-performance/95132/2 "2006-05-22T19:28:25Z")

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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