re: single process/multicores The single core benchmarks doesn't change the picture much either - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/ruby.php http://b

re: single process/multicores The single core benchmarks doesn't change the picture much either - http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/ruby.php http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/ruby.php re: GMP / C libraries Generally I agree with you on this however agreeing on a level playing field may not be easy! I assume that some languages, stdlibs or VM's come with GMP (or similar ilk) which perhaps gave them an unfair advantage? And what about languages that come with coroutines? In real world I use Coro/AnyEvent with Perl but these are separate modules and not part of Perl core libraries. So languages like Lua/Python have an (unfair?) advantage here? > It should be pure language against pure language Ideally then it should be same algorithm against algorithm? I recently rewrote the fasta.pl implementation on Alioth using an exact port of the fasta.rb code. Before change Ruby fasta was two times faster than the Perl version. Afterwards Ruby was 30% slower than Perl - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5141179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5141179