> Many people choose Ruby and figure, given that premature optimization is the root of all evil, they'll optimize later if needed.
True.
> That's like choosing between a farm tractor or a ferrari - and figuring if the tractor doesn't perform up to snuff, we'll add a spoiler
Its really not like that at all, because programming languages aren't like vehicles. Particularly, with Ruby, on typical method of optimization is finding which bits of code are bottlenecks, and then optimizing those bottlenecks, often by replacing them with C (or, if the Ruby runtime being used in JRuby, Java).
Which I guess is like having your tractor turn into a Ferrari for the parts of work that involve going long distances on a road without towing something, but I think that kind of points out how bad even using the tractor/Ferrari analogy is.
True.
> That's like choosing between a farm tractor or a ferrari - and figuring if the tractor doesn't perform up to snuff, we'll add a spoiler
Its really not like that at all, because programming languages aren't like vehicles. Particularly, with Ruby, on typical method of optimization is finding which bits of code are bottlenecks, and then optimizing those bottlenecks, often by replacing them with C (or, if the Ruby runtime being used in JRuby, Java).
Which I guess is like having your tractor turn into a Ferrari for the parts of work that involve going long distances on a road without towing something, but I think that kind of points out how bad even using the tractor/Ferrari analogy is.