Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#1

Post by j_s » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 2:21 PM UTC

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#2

Post by austinpray » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 3:07 PM UTC

>Hardware: Mid-2007 MacBook Pro

Wouldn't it make more sense to do this on generic server hardware with a LTS Linux OS? Once that vintage and customized MacBook bites the dust the website pretty much dies as well.

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#3

Post by RyanZAG » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:01 PM UTC

Not sure how comparing different versions of rails shows if its 'fast' yet. I'd think setting up some request target and seeing how far RoR is from that target with each version would be better. Or comparing RoR to other platforms is also a good bet, eg http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/

I just don't really see how this answers the question other than 'ehh I think it looks a bit faster than it was awhile ago?'

EDIT: Also interestingly, JRuby seems to be slightly better on the small instance EC2 test at techempower than regular Ruby (small instance should be similar to a laptop?). Yet in these graphs it's much slower. Anybody know the reason?

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#4

Post by matthuggins » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:02 PM UTC

Wouldn't it make more sense to test various features of Ruby for comparison rather than comparing an entire web framework? Given that, the URL should be israilsfastyet.com, or more appropriately howdoesrailsbehaveonvariousrubyversions.com

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#5

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:05 PM UTC

tl;dr: no.

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#6

Post by michaelhoffman » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:06 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #5

tl;dr: no.

I was expecting the web page to just consist of "No."

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#7

Post by yuvipanda » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC

5s startup time for a web framework seems rather high. I wonder how well it compares to similar frameworks in other languages (Django? ASP.NET MVC?)

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#8

Post by Jgrubb » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:12 PM UTC

JRuby question -- Why is it that much slower? I'd have thought that part of the point was to take advantage of the JVM's built in optimization.

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#9

Post by Tloewald » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

austinpray wrote: post #2

>Hardware: Mid-2007 MacBook Pro Wouldn't it make more sense to do this on generic server hardware with a LTS Linux OS? Once that vintage and customized MacBook bites the dust the website pretty much dies as well.

There's nothing magical about a Linux server. If you're arguing an LTS edition will run on newer hardware, well sure but the benchmarks will be just as incomparable.

Re: Is Ruby Fast Yet?

#10

Post by jarrett » Thu, Dec 26, 2013, 4:19 PM UTC

RyanZAG wrote: post #3

Not sure how comparing different versions of rails shows if its 'fast' yet. I'd think setting up some request target and seeing how far RoR is from that target with each version would be better. Or comparing RoR to other platforms is also a good bet, eg http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ I just don't really see how this answers the question other than 'ehh I think it looks a bit faster than it was awhile ago?' ED…

Amazon says their "m1.small" instance has 1.7 GiB of memory. That's a lot less than most current laptops.

Maybe JRuby uses more memory in total, but can handle more concurrent requests per MB of memory used? That could explain the discrepancy if it's true, though it's just speculation on my part.

Another theory is that the benchmarks are too application-specific. Rails is a complex framework with which you can build many different kinds of applications, each with its own performance characteristics. Conceivably, application A could perform better on JRuby, while application B could perform better on MRI. Depending on which application you use for your benchmark, either interpreter could appear faster.

This calls into question the utility of benchmarking an entire framework. It might be better to do micro-benchmarks, with each one testing a specific scenario. Scenarios could include, for example: A request that loads 1,000 database records into memory; a request for a static image; a request that queries a many-to-many relationship; a request that saves an uploaded file to disk.