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My takeaway from the project is that Ruby is a great language hampered by a terrible execution environment. He has a problem with execution speed and blames th
by weaksauce 17y ago
My takeaway from the project is that Ruby is a great language hampered by a terrible execution environment.
He has a problem with execution speed and blames the tool instead of using the correct tool for the job. I could probably hammer a nail in with the back of a screwdriver but it would be better to learn how to use the hammer. Sigh. Call C from ruby/python/any interpreted language if you NEED speed.
- donw 17y agoOr Java from JRuby; it's really useful to be able to just use a native Java class without any extra work whatsoever.
- Tichy 17y ago"blames the tool instead of using the correct tool for the job" Uh, why the negativity? Basically he is saying that Ruby is not well suited to certain tasks. How does that differ from what you say?
- sp332 17y agoThe screwdriver is not "hampered by" its poor nail-driving capabilities.
- kscaldef 17y agoOkay, but I can write code just as quickly in Perl or Python and it'll be several times faster than Ruby. I can write that's Haskell that's just as elegant and concise (although it takes me slightly longer) and that runs orders of magnitude faster. Increasingly, I'm unclear on what this unique advantage is that Ruby supposedly has that makes up for the atrocious implementation.
- jwhite 17y agoAmong other things, he saw segfaults in the GC and found the debugger randomly detaching from the target process. I'd say that's a terrible execution environment, and orthogonal to speed. Sometimes you don't see how bad a tool is until you push it's limits, and I'd say that's just what he did. To use your analogy, I can buy a $2 screwdriver that works fine in many cases, but the shaft might snap or bend if I apply too much torque to it (and no nails in sight).