My 2 cents about languages.
C is the universal "assembly language". I don't think I've ever used a computer family that didn't have a C compiler on it (after C was invented of course). Often new languages, to get started, will just translate into C code and then compile with the C compiler. I wrote my first Go programs earlier this year. I first used Ruby and it was short and easy to write. The GTP protocol (enough for CGOS) took only about 1 page of code. However in timing tests, it could only do about 30 game simulations per second. This was unacceptable and I abandoned Ruby. Next I translated the ideas into C++. Everything was more work, but I anticipated a 10-20 times speed up so it seemed the tradeoff would be worth it. After finishing, I did the same timing tests as with Ruby and it did 9000 game simulations per second without much optimization. I knew, of course, that Ruby is slower than C++ but a factor of 300 is amazing. It helps to have explicit control of memory and mature C compilers that generate fast code. I am still wondering how Ruby could be so much slower than C++. Perhaps this problem is just not suited for Ruby. Chuck Paulson
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