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0 pointsVeejayRampay10y ago0 comments

Exactly. Ruby would probably have massive adoption with JS-like speed.

0 comments

My implementation of Ruby, JRuby+Truffle, is as fast as V8

http://stefan-marr.de/downloads/crystal.html

Note that usually being "as fast as" a production JSVM means also proving that you can start up as fast as JSVMs do. Have you done this?

ehsanu110y ago

Search around for "Substrate VM". I see it referenced in some slide decks, and it's designed to make JVM startup much faster.

Here's an old slidedeck that talks about it: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/jvmls2013wimmer-20140...

ksec10y ago

Wow thx for the reminder, I have forgotten about it already. I remember the promise of Truffle + Graal + Substrate VM.

My god can't believe it was 3 years ago i read about it on HN.

pizlonator10y ago

I know about it. I'm not concerned with future hypotheticals, but current actual measurements.

That's the currency I deal in.

1 more reply

ajross10y ago

Ruby has massive adoption, as do Python and Perl and PHP. Environments with objectively better performance like the JVM and .NET have not, in fact, done all that well comparatively in this environment (which is to say they've done fine too and achieved "massive" adoption, just not that much better than their slower competitors).

In fact, looking at the market as it stands right now I'd say that performance concerns are almost entirely uncorrelated with programming environment adoption.

yxhuvud10y ago

Considering the massive speed improvements we have been seeing in Javascript, but also languages like Ruby, I'd say compilers is a solved problem for staticly compiled languages, but perhaps not as much for interpreted highly expressive languages.

abecedarius10y ago

Sort of. Lisp had a good combo of expressiveness and speed in the 80s, but it reached that point on the efficiency frontier by different techniques, like heavier use of macros. The newer techniques like trace compilation can make life even better, but the language design decisions in Ruby/Python/etc. that made that sort of thing necessary if you want speed, they didn't really pay for themselves from the perspective of smug Lisp weenies like me who were happy enough with our language and just wanted pragmatics like libraries.

sklogic10y ago

Did you just call Javascript a "highly expressive" language? Really?!?

1 more reply

pizlonator10y ago

ajross is right. People choose the languages they like regardless of performance.

JS perf is important to users though. Faster execution means fewer watts spent rendering and interacting with your favorite web page.

(Fun fact: B3's backend contains a machine description language that gets compiled to C++ code by a ruby script, opcode_generator.rb. We use Ruby a lot.)

cosinusoidally10y ago

Why didn't you use JavaScript for that purpose (in a similar vein to how LuaJIT uses Lua for dynasm)?

pizlonator10y ago

I'm not a big fan of self-hosting. I like that you can build JavaScriptCore without using JavaScriptCore.

1 more reply

iso-8859-110y ago

Suppose that you are developing not to push this platform, but to simple do better on this platform. What does self-hosting gain you in that case?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

chrisseaton10y ago

My implementation of Ruby, JRuby+Truffle, is as fast as V8

http://stefan-marr.de/downloads/crystal.html

pizlonator10y ago

Note that usually being "as fast as" a production JSVM means also proving that you can start up as fast as JSVMs do. Have you done this?

ehsanu110y ago

Search around for "Substrate VM". I see it referenced in some slide decks, and it's designed to make JVM startup much faster.

Here's an old slidedeck that talks about it: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/jvmls2013wimmer-20140...

ksec10y ago

Wow thx for the reminder, I have forgotten about it already. I remember the promise of Truffle + Graal + Substrate VM.

My god can't believe it was 3 years ago i read about it on HN.

pizlonator10y ago

I know about it. I'm not concerned with future hypotheticals, but current actual measurements.

That's the currency I deal in.

1 more reply

ajross10y ago

In fact, looking at the market as it stands right now I'd say that performance concerns are almost entirely uncorrelated with programming environment adoption.

yxhuvud10y ago

abecedarius10y ago

sklogic10y ago

Did you just call Javascript a "highly expressive" language? Really?!?

1 more reply

pizlonator10y ago

ajross is right. People choose the languages they like regardless of performance.

JS perf is important to users though. Faster execution means fewer watts spent rendering and interacting with your favorite web page.

(Fun fact: B3's backend contains a machine description language that gets compiled to C++ code by a ruby script, opcode_generator.rb. We use Ruby a lot.)

cosinusoidally10y ago

Why didn't you use JavaScript for that purpose (in a similar vein to how LuaJIT uses Lua for dynasm)?

pizlonator10y ago

I'm not a big fan of self-hosting. I like that you can build JavaScriptCore without using JavaScriptCore.

1 more reply

iso-8859-110y ago

Suppose that you are developing not to push this platform, but to simple do better on this platform. What does self-hosting gain you in that case?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse