# Will the performance catch up be next milestone? **URL:** \ **Category:** IronRuby\ **Created:** [July 29, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366 "2010-07-29T04:58:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/1 "2010-07-29T04:58:57Z")
IBM Engineer completed a performance benchmark for rubys, seems ir does not well done in the performance. > **[The Great Ruby Shootout (July 2010) | Programming Zen](https://programmingzen.com/the-great-ruby-shootout-july-2010/)** > > The Great Ruby Shootout measures the performance of several Ruby implementations by testing them against a series of synthetic benchmarks. Recently I ran Mac and Windows shootouts as well, which tested a handful of implementations. However this... ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 5:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/2 "2010-07-29T05:51:31Z")
Quoting the web site: _Disclaimer_ Synthetic benchmarks cannot predict how fast your programs will be when dealing with a particular implementation. They provide an (entertaining) educated guess, but you shouldn’t draw overly definitive conclusions from them. The values reported here should be assumed to be characteristic of server-side — and long running — processes; they should be taken with a grain of salt. If your primary concern is speed, you should probably look to write your app in C or Assembly. – Will G. [http://hotgazpacho.org/](http://hotgazpacho.org/) ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 5:59am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/3 "2010-07-29T05:59:08Z")
It’s probably not intentional but his benchmark graphs are misleading. Because Mono is not nearly as fast or as mature as Microsoft’s .NET, the performance of IronRuby on mono is much worse. Unfortunately all his graphs show Mono performance only, which makes IronRuby appear very slow. If you look at the numbers directly (there is a table further down comparing IronRuby on mono vs IronRuby on .net), IronRuby is much much faster. It appears to me that IronRuby on windows (.NET) is faster than MRI 1.9.2 (“regular” ruby) on windows! It’s still not as fast as MRI 1.9.2 on linux, but it’s not that far behind either. ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 8:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/4 "2010-07-29T08:09:04Z")
IronRuby is exciting because it brings Windows, Ruby and .NET together as one. There are plenty of cases where deploying to Windows would either be ideal, or in some cases, a must. Imagine developing a Ruby app that needs to integrate with Sharepoint, or Great Plains; how would you go about doing so? You could implement web services in C++, or perhaps C#… but then you have several languages to deal with and multiple code bases to manage, as opposed to a single Ruby app. Enter IronRuby. Now you have the ability to harness the all of the Windows oriented .NET libraries _from_ Ruby. You could use DRb, or perhaps RESTful services using Sinatra, and then consume those services from a Rails app. So, while I agree that I’d rather deploy my main app to a linux box, it’s great to know that I can use IronRuby on Windows to seamlessly integrate with Microsoft solutions. I would imagine that it’s these sorts of situations that Microsoft is banking on (as well as scripting scenarios and such). -Charles On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:40 PM, Nathan Stults \ **Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 7:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/5 "2010-07-29T07:04:06Z") Yeah, but who wants to _deploy_ Ruby code on Windows? Develop, sure…but then performance doesn’t matter. If IronRuby is aiming only to be a windows centric technology, I can’t imagine what future it really has in store for it, that is, standing alone on its own two feet as a Ruby implementation. Integrated into .NET software is a different story irrelevant to the benchmarks being discussed, but I don’t think the benchmarks are misleading as far as the Ruby community at large is concerned, because for that group, I don’t imagine Windows is a viable deployment target ( why would it be?) so benchmarking on Linux is probably the most realistic kind of benchmarking you can do when comparing ruby interpreters for that particular audience. I suppose that is one of the things that makes the IronRuby project an enigma to me - in my mind Ruby is a finger pointing to Linux, so it seems an odd one for Microsoft to extend. From: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) [[mailto:removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)] On Behalf Of Orion E. Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 8:59 PM To: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) Subject: Re: [Ironruby-core] Will the performance catch up be next milestone? It’s probably not intentional but his benchmark graphs are misleading. Because Mono is not nearly as fast or as mature as Microsoft’s .NET, the performance of IronRuby on mono is much worse. Unfortunately all his graphs show Mono performance only, which makes IronRuby appear very slow. If you look at the numbers directly (there is a table further down comparing IronRuby on mono vs IronRuby on .net), IronRuby is much much faster. It appears to me that IronRuby on windows (.NET) is faster than MRI 1.9.2 (“regular” ruby) on windows! It’s still not as fast as MRI 1.9.2 on linux, but it’s not that far behind either. On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Ray L. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: IBM Engineer completed a performance benchmark for rubys, seems ir does not well done in the performance. ## [Programming Zen - Musings About Programming and Technology](http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the-great-ruby-shootout-july-2010/) Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2010, 8:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/6 "2010-07-29T08:24:17Z")
I think Ruby on Windows has it’s place. There are many companies with investment in MS servers, Applications and infrastructure so don’t completely discard IronRuby for Windows. Also there’re other scenarios that don’t involve Ruby on the server like Silverlight, standalone WPF apps, Excel Interop, Plugins, Scripting Apps. PS. There’s a thread about IronRuby usage on this mailing list. I’ve not had a chance to read it, but that could give you an idea of the way people is currently using it. I’ve not had a chance to read it, so it might just prove you’re right… Regards Miguel There was recently a thread about adopti On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Nathan Stults ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 2:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/7 "2010-07-30T02:36:42Z")
This benchmark was done against mono 2.4.4 which is significantly old. I guess 2.6 shouldn’t bring much performance improvements but the upcoming 2.8 release with the new GC can make huge differences specially on GC bound benchmarks such as binary\_trees. On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 1:40 AM, Nathan Stults ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 11:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/8 "2010-07-31T11:26:25Z")
Oh, and RavenDB, which I have successfully deployed as an Azure worker role. Mark Sent from my iPhone ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 12:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/9 "2010-07-31T00:29:48Z")
On 29/07/2010, at 4:40 PM, Nathan Stults wrote: > Yeah, but who wants to _deploy_ Ruby code on Windows? Personally, I wouldn’t run a public facing internet site on windows, but that’s only because I spent 2 years developing rails apps on FreeBSD for another company and picked up a lot of skills from it. Otherwise, I’d run a windows server. I also know a lot of people who run windows servers. From what I’ve seen the penetration of linux servers inside small-to-medium companies here is approaching 0%. IronRuby (particularly if it ever gets good userfriendly IIS integration) means I can develop a rails app and get the local microsoft sysadmin to deploy it in a couple of clicks. > Develop, sure…but then performance doesn’t matter. Really? I become rather unhappy if I’m having to dev something where the performance sucks (compiling C++ apps really really gets my goat). This is the primary reason why I continually wish they’d improve the IronRuby startup perf. **scalability** doesn’t matter for development, but scalability and performance are two different things, and the benchmark certainly doesn’t measure scalability > If IronRuby is aiming only to be a windows centric technology, I can’t imagine what future it really has in store for it, that is, standing alone on its own two feet as a Ruby implementation. Integrated into .NET software is a different story irrelevant to the benchmarks being discussed, but I don’t think the benchmarks are misleading as far as the Ruby community at large is concerned, because for that group, I don’t imagine Windows is a viable deployment target ( why would it be?) Umm… Why wouldn’t it be? Windows server pricing is actually not too bad, so long as you stay away from the clusterf\*\*\* that is SQL server (it’s great tech but the licensing and pricing are crazy). Again, I’ve seen plenty of windows servers run by company sysadmins and I’d love to be able to deploy some rails apps onto them (MRI is worse than terrible for deploying to IIS, so again, IronRuby could stand to do really well). You could argue that the “target audience” for that article was 23 year olds creating the next FaceTube because it was posted to Hacker News, however Antonio C. is an Evangelist for IBM. I wouldn’t equate “IBM” with internet startups either… It seemed like the target audience was simply “people who are interested in ruby performance”… > so benchmarking on Linux is probably the most realistic kind of benchmarking you can do when comparing ruby interpreters for that particular audience. I suppose that is one of the things that makes the IronRuby project an enigma to me – in my mind Ruby is a finger pointing to Linux, so it seems an odd one for Microsoft to extend. I agree with your point of view, however I draw the opposite conclusion. Looking at MRI and JRuby, Linux (or some BSD/solaris/etc) really is the go-to platform if you want to develop a ruby application. The performance of MRI in particular is clearly a lot better on \*nix. This is then coupled with the fact that Rails is an outstanding platform for getting web apps up and running, and web apps are pretty hot these days. From that point of view, it makes perfect sense for Microsoft to build IronRuby as a top notch Ruby implementation for windows. If they pull this off, and couple it with some other windows integration type stuff (an IIS admin plugin to administer rails sites would be awesome) then in theory two things can happen: 1. People that were familiar with windows but are considering switching away because of a ruby/rails app might stay on windows (and then, pay microsoft for windows server and maybe even SQL server eventually) 2. If they do a REALLY good job, people running rails apps on linux might switch to windows! I’d love to see #2 happen, but unfortunately it’s a long way off. The IronRuby team seems to be really awesome, but there’s only like 3 of you, right? ☹ ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 8:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/10 "2010-08-07T20:45:52Z")
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Orion E. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I agree with your point of view, however I draw the opposite conclusion. > Looking at MRI and JRuby, Linux (or some BSD/solaris/etc) really is the > go-to platform if you want to develop a ruby application. The performance of > MRI in particular is clearly a lot better on \*nix. This is then coupled with > the fact that Rails is an outstanding platform for getting web apps up and > running, and web apps are pretty hot these days. FWIW, we do a _lot_ of work to make sure JRuby behaves properly on Windows…in many cases more work than even Ruby core can put in. We’ve recognized that Ruby needs better representation on Windows, and until IronRuby can take over we’ve tried to make JRuby at least a better option than MRI. Yes, there’s the unfortunate truth that almost none of the JRuby core devs use Windows, but we are actively trying to avoid Windows being treated as a second-class platform. We even have a Windows installer, executable, native library support (including FFI) and maintain all of it for our Windows users. So while it’s probably fair to say \*nix platforms are better supported by JRuby, I think it’s also important to point out that JRuby is currently a better (more consistent, more stable, faster) option for Ruby on Windows than MRI. - Charlie ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/11 "2010-08-07T21:32:42Z")
Chiming in a bit late, hoping it will be useful though! > Yeah, but who wants to **deploy** Ruby code on Windows? I do deploy Ruby code on Windows (production), just not for public facing web apps. For instance, I have MRI 1.8.6 data crunching (datawarehouse) running on Windows. I also run JRuby on Windows (see [http://blog.logeek.fr/2010/8/2/on-jruby-resque-and-windows](http://blog.logeek.fr/2010/8/2/on-jruby-resque-and-windows)) to interact with APIs that run only on Windows and to generate PDFs (the web front-end is itself running on Ubuntu). I have another client who has been able to automate an amazing amount of work in their company, thanks to relying on Ruby, OLE or other APIs (they work with many tools such as SAS, Excel, Access). I am for one _very_ happy by the work put by both the JRuby team and the RubyInstaller project to ensure things work properly there (and obviously, by the IronRuby team too :-). Just to add a few data points! – Thibaut ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/12 "2010-08-07T23:30:57Z")
Sorry Charles, I didn’t mean to infer that the JRuby team wasn’t doing a great job on windows (you certainly are - you’re also doing a lot better job than the core ruby guys for windows as well. Are they still compiling with MSVC6?), my point was more about perception. I’m not sure if this is true internationally, but from what I’ve seen of the industry here and in australia, most development shops here seem to fall into 3 categories: 1: Web shops (PHP, etc) which have nothing to do with either Java or .NET 2: Microsoft shops ([asp.net](http://asp.net), windows client apps, deploying on windows server) 3: Java shops. This last lot of Java shops tends to be building software for larger companies (banks, etc), and seems to near-universally deploy on a unix of some kind. I’m not sure if this is because they think Java itself runs better on a non-windows OS, or if they just prefer it. (I’ve never professionally employed as a Java developer so I haven’t had any direct interaction with these companies) At any rate, JRuby (at least from a perception/mindshare point) gets lumped along with the rest of Java. The perception is that JRuby is Java, and Java is better on unix, so therefore you should run JRuby on Unix. I don’t think this would change even if 100% of the JRuby core devs used windows all day long 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@ray\_linn](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ray_linn)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 11:45am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/will-the-performance-catch-up-be-next-milestone/192366/13 "2010-07-31T11:45:44Z")
When IR achieves a compatibility that will run Rails 3, I’m planning on getting it running thru an [ASP.NET](http://ASP.NET) site which will enable deployment to the Azure platform. I believe that will be a very compelling solution for many people, especially with a mapper adapter to Table Storage. Mark Sent from my iPhone