The quality of the syntax is purely a question of taste and as such isn't really debatable (de gustibus coloribusque non disputandum est), but so far it seems that Ruby still lacks in scalability and speed compared to Perl or Python.
Ruby still lacks in scalability and speed compared to Perl
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-lang...
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/which-programming-lan...
These graphs tell me
1. Perl is slightly faster. 2. Perl uses much less memory on average 3. Perl uses less code.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...
However, on Ruby18 you do have a substantially bigger problem:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...
Lies, Damned lies.
It must be the spectacles you're looking through.
These graphs tell me that
- about the same number of Perl programs are faster than the Ruby 1.9 programs by about the same amount, as there are Ruby programs faster than Perl programs
- some of the Perl programs use half the memory of the corresponding Ruby 1.9 programs
- the Perl programs and Ruby 1.9 programs use about the same amount of code.
Only if you focus on a single number - the median - and ignore the complete overlap of the measurements shown by the boxplot and interquartile range.