Why Ruby Isn't Slow
summary
Claim: Ruby can be fast when its VM eliminates hash lookups and boxing rather than changing the language. Implementation: a VM called Topaz built on RPython/PyPy technology uses a tracing JIT with guards, promotion and quasi-immutability to make method dispatch, constant lookup and primitive allocation cheap. Results: microbenchmarks show ~2x–500x speedups, thousands of Ruby specs pass, but Rails/Chef compatibility and full stdlib/encoding support remain incomplete.
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chapters (30)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:33Ruby is slow
- 1:16CPU bound tasks
- 2:11Common answers
- 3:16Ruby can be fast
- 3:26Why is Ruby slow
- 3:53Indirect function calls
- 5:30Fast Ruby
- 5:48Our Python
- 8:17Our Function
- 9:43Dynamic Languages
- 10:32Ruby Object Model
- 11:50Python Primitives
- 12:04Lightability
- 13:07Promotion
- 14:13Quasiimmutability
- 15:29Building a system
- 15:41Optimized version
- 16:21Sending methods
- 17:45Fine method
- 19:08Three instructions
- 19:41Topaz
- 20:21Constants
- 21:45Links
- 22:15Benchmark Results
- 24:45Complexity
- 25:35C Extensions
- 27:31Hints
- 31:54Cutting Corners
- 33:46Missing Parts
