> people think of things like MRI 1.8 as being "interpreted" and expect those things to be slow. One could just as well take the same language and run it on a t

> people think of things like MRI 1.8 as being "interpreted" and expect those things to be slow. One could just as well take the same language and run it on a tracing JIT VM. (after some considerable engineering) Off topic, but in case you weren't aware, that "considerable engineering" exists, and is called JRuby. It works (almost) exactly as you describe. And yes, it is rather fast :-)