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I've programmed in both Ruby and Python. I like both, but ... It should never be forgotten that the ultimate purpose of programming languages is to make specif

I've programmed in both Ruby and Python. I like both, but ... It should never be forgotten that the ultimate purpose of programming languages is to make specific usable programs. It's sort of fashionable to ignore performance but in reality it's always an issue of some kind. And the fact remains that the price paid for Ruby and Python's features is severe performance degradation. That's improved over time but as far as I know it remains a real problem. One shouldn't let admiration for language features supersede user experience and resource utilization.

eropple 3y ago
The vast majority of web code is waiting on a database, written in something eye-poppingly optimized, to push a string back to the client that asked for it. It's "pick things up and put them down" plumbing and the delta between a Fast Language and a Slow Language will usually be swamped by connection latency. There are of course places where it isn't appropriate to use a Ruby or a Python, sure. So don't. There are plenty of others where sniffing at them on the grounds of performance is making up a guy to get mad at.
- RagnarD 3y ago
  There's more to the world than web oriented programming, and more possibilities for Ruby than Rails.
  - eropple 3y ago
    Of course there's "more". I frequently write code that's going nowhere near a web server. My Github projects from my Ruby days is zero percent Rails, even--and it's a bunch of not-web stuff for which performance also wasn't an issue then, either. This isn't even some kind of well-actually gotcha, it's firmly a mainstream, obvious thing.