[BioRuby] Ruby speed

[Pjotr Prins]

On Tue, Nov 03, 2009 at 03:11:52PM +0100, Yannick Wurm wrote:
> Is there any hope for ruby?

I guess you mean this tongue in cheek. However, it is dangerous as it
may turn off users looking to start with Ruby or Perl. So let me state
I think there is plenty of hope for Ruby. You are talking execution
speed of 'simple' oneliners. For complex programming Ruby outspeeds
Perl, usually in practise. Particularly the speed of getting things
done, but also a cleaner way of programming helps create better code.
The end result will often be faster. And the third gain is in the code
maintenance cycle. I am talking from experience here. I have written
a lot of code in both languages (and Python too).

Perl6 is getting interesting. The syntax is much cleaned up, proper
OOP, and (what I like) strong functional programming support. But its
execution speed is not even close to Ruby's now. I have heard people
joke that Ruby is what Perl6 was meant to be.

Anyway you can see where the Perl folks are heading.

Pj.

P.S. What is there to stop you from using both languages?