

The Great Ruby Shootout (December 2008) - acangiano
http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/12/09/the-great-ruby-shootout-december-2008/

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old-gregg
I can't stand Windows, but wanted to point something out to all blind Windows
haters out there: look at Vista vs Ubuntu numbers. Windows beats Linux running
MRI by 10-50% in nearly all tests [when they pass] which aligns perfectly with
my own observations.

Certainly such big difference can't be explained by more effective system
calls. I attribute this to Microsoft's superior C/C++ compiler. Back in my C++
loving days I played with various compilers regularly, and MSVC has always
been the most optimizing, and kept advancing rapidly from version to version.
It also compiles 2-3 times faster than GCC if I remember correctly... uhhh I
miss it. :-)

Also his JRuby startup time is inaccurate. No way JVM starts in under a
second: it's more like 2 full seconds on his hardware. More likely he had some
of JVM in the filesystem cache. Vista/OSX will pre-fetch JVM modules even
after you reboot (not sure about Linux) if you run Java software and
especially if you have 8GB of RAM...

~~~
nanexcool
Why is it that, more often than not, whenever someone says something positive
about a Microsoft product or the company itself, they have to start with:

\- I can't stand Windows but... \- I'm 100% GNU/Linux but... \- Microsoft
and/or BillG can burn in hell but... \- etc.

Why the need for justification? We're all informed people here. Can we state
positive facts about Microsoft without fear of backlash? Can I post this reply
without fear of it being buried?

~~~
old-gregg
_Why the need for justification? We're all informed people here. Can we state
positive facts about Microsoft without fear of backlash?_

This wasn't the first positive post about Microsoft tech I've ever done. The
answer to your question is: no we can't. :-) Just recently I got beaten to
death by OSX and Linux fanboys on reddit for mentioning superior
threading/process switching on Windows.

~~~
nanexcool
Sorry, didn't mean to single you out!

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KirinDave
I'm glad that we're starting to see realistic and absolute comparisons.

And I wonder how many people are surprised to learn that JRuby is doing so
well right now.

~~~
old-gregg
I don't like JVM: I hate the mandatory 2-second startup time and "warming up"
time. And the standard set of libraries doesn't look particularly well
engineered to me (comparing Java SE to .NET or Python's libs). Also, despite
being enterprise-tested and good at memory management with it's "best in
class" generational GC, Java programs continue to be memory hogs, based on
personal experience.

But you can't beat a nice piece of software (JRuby) and the huge ecosystem of
high quality Java libraries. Moreover, JRuby guys are awesome at listening and
talking to their community. You can go and ask any question about JRuby
internals on #jruby - someone will always be there.

I am definitely considering switching my projects to JRuby, just need to find
time.

~~~
ohhmaagawd
jruby startup is about <1 second on my box. They did a bunch of tweaks earlier
this year to solve the issue.

~~~
old-gregg
No it isn't. I am seeing an even lower number: 0.24 sec on my box, right after
reboot.

That's called the filesystem cache and pre-fetch daemon (present on
Vista/OSX).

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jbert
To me, one of the more interesting aspects of that was that the ruby version
optimised for reduced memory usage got a 2x speedup.

That makes sense in terms of cpu cache misses. Has anyone run any numbers to
see how gcc -Ospace compares with -O2 on recent hardware?

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hxa7241
By my reckoning, that makes Ruby 1.9/Yarv the same kind of speed as Python.
(At the slow end of the scale, but nothing to be ashamed of any more.)

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samuel
The most interesting about the results IMHO is JRuby's performance. It's now
faster than CRuby1.8, and, for what I have read, solves also the scalability
problems associated to it(threads, GC, etc...).

And there's a lot of room for improvement, specially with the advent of
invokedynamic. I wasn't eager to learn Ruby because of their alleged
performance and scalability problems, but it seems that JRuby is changing
that.

(If I'm mistaken, and things aren't so bright, please, enlighten me).

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acangiano
Please read this important update:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=393988>

