How Ruby Can Be Fast: A Tour of Dynamic VM Technologies
by Glenn Vanderburg
All Rubyists know that in its current state, Ruby is slow. And our usual answer to critics is "it's
fast enough." But there's no reason Ruby can't be a really fast language. New VMs are making Ruby
faster, and we'll probably see Ruby get much faster over the next two or three years. But every
Rubyist would benefit from an understanding of what's going on under the hood. This talk delves
into the techniques that have been used to make dynamic languages fast, and explores how those
techniques are being used by YARV, JRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, and others.
About Glenn Vanderburg
Glenn has been working with Ruby for eight years. He is a principal at Relevance, Inc.