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I was once involved in a large-scale government project that rewrote a Java app to RoR. They went from 50 servers to 10. It has probably got more to do with th

I was once involved in a large-scale government project that rewrote a Java app to RoR. They went from 50 servers to 10. It has probably got more to do with the rewrite and the new architecture than whatever language it was written in.

wstrange 10y ago
Or the fact that new servers are an order of magnitude faster than the ones they replaced.
- Drdrdrq 10y ago
  Order of magnitude faster? I doubt that. Unless the old ones were really old / slow to begin with. But really, we are both speculating without knowing the facts.
joslin01 10y ago
What? It absolutely has to do with the language. Ruby binary trees: 57 seconds Scala binary trees: 11 seconds [1] - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/ruby.html http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/ruby.html [2] - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/scala.html http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/scala.html
- FooBarWidget 10y ago
  That would mean something if Ruby apps are 100% Ruby and/or are performing binary tree operations all the time, or doing similar kinds of CPU-intensive operations as depicted in the alioth benchmarks. But they don't. Ruby web apps perform lots of string manipulation, memory allocation, I/O. A lot of expensive things are offloaded to C libraries. Things like XML parsing are offloaded to native libraries like libxml; nobody uses an XML parser fully implemented in Ruby. Ruby does not reimplemented gzip compression in Ruby, it uses zlib. So the alioth benchmarks are not representative of real-world performance.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - igouy 10y ago
    >> Ruby web apps perform lots of string manipulation, memory allocation, I/O. << string manipulation http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=revcomp&lang=yarv&id=2 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... memory allocation http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=binarytrees&lang=yarv&id=1 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... I/O fasta, fasta-redux, reverse-complement write 250MB regex-dna reads 50MB; k-nucleotide, reverse-complement read 250MB >> …offloaded to native libraries… So the alioth benchmarks are not representative of real-world performance. << The benchmarks game does show C programs ;-) The benchmarks game does show scripting-languages explicitly using native libraries: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=pidigits&lang=php&id=5 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes...
    - FooBarWidget 10y ago
      > string manipulation That benchmark performs string manipulations that rarely occur in web apps. Web apps need: concatenation, substring, find/replace, maybe with regexps. All of those are implemented in C. > memory allocation Web apps don't tend to implement entire trees in pure Ruby. That benchmark is completely non-representative of real-world performance. What exactly are you getting at? Of course it's easy to find a bunch of synthetic benchmarks that show weaknesses in particular cases. Still doesn't prove anything.
      - igouy 10y ago
        > Web apps need: concatenation, substring, find/replace, maybe with regexps. All of those are implemented in C. join and gsub? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=regexdna&lang=yarv&id=1 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... > Web apps don't tend to implement entire trees in pure Ruby. Nor do other apps but that is what Hans Boehm came up with as a simple GC benchmark. http://hboehm.info/gc/gc_bench/ http://hboehm.info/gc/gc_bench/ > What exactly are you getting at? You don't seem to know what is shown on the benchmarks game website.

wstrange 10y ago

Or the fact that new servers are an order of magnitude faster than the ones they replaced.

Drdrdrq 10y ago
Order of magnitude faster? I doubt that. Unless the old ones were really old / slow to begin with. But really, we are both speculating without knowing the facts.

joslin01 10y ago

What? It absolutely has to do with the language. Ruby binary trees: 57 seconds Scala binary trees: 11 seconds [1] - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/ruby.html http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/ruby.html [2] - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/scala.html http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/scala.html

FooBarWidget 10y ago
That would mean something if Ruby apps are 100% Ruby and/or are performing binary tree operations all the time, or doing similar kinds of CPU-intensive operations as depicted in the alioth benchmarks. But they don't. Ruby web apps perform lots of string manipulation, memory allocation, I/O. A lot of expensive things are offloaded to C libraries. Things like XML parsing are offloaded to native libraries like libxml; nobody uses an XML parser fully implemented in Ruby. Ruby does not reimplemented gzip compression in Ruby, it uses zlib. So the alioth benchmarks are not representative of real-world performance.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- igouy 10y ago
  >> Ruby web apps perform lots of string manipulation, memory allocation, I/O. << string manipulation http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=revcomp&lang=yarv&id=2 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... memory allocation http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=binarytrees&lang=yarv&id=1 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... I/O fasta, fasta-redux, reverse-complement write 250MB regex-dna reads 50MB; k-nucleotide, reverse-complement read 250MB >> …offloaded to native libraries… So the alioth benchmarks are not representative of real-world performance. << The benchmarks game does show C programs ;-) The benchmarks game does show scripting-languages explicitly using native libraries: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=pidigits&lang=php&id=5 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes...
  - FooBarWidget 10y ago
    > string manipulation That benchmark performs string manipulations that rarely occur in web apps. Web apps need: concatenation, substring, find/replace, maybe with regexps. All of those are implemented in C. > memory allocation Web apps don't tend to implement entire trees in pure Ruby. That benchmark is completely non-representative of real-world performance. What exactly are you getting at? Of course it's easy to find a bunch of synthetic benchmarks that show weaknesses in particular cases. Still doesn't prove anything.
    - igouy 10y ago
      > Web apps need: concatenation, substring, find/replace, maybe with regexps. All of those are implemented in C. join and gsub? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=regexdna&lang=yarv&id=1 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... > Web apps don't tend to implement entire trees in pure Ruby. Nor do other apps but that is what Hans Boehm came up with as a simple GC benchmark. http://hboehm.info/gc/gc_bench/ http://hboehm.info/gc/gc_bench/ > What exactly are you getting at? You don't seem to know what is shown on the benchmarks game website.