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A Ruby newbie posted to Ruby Lang that he had implemented an is_prime? algorythm in Ruby, Perl, and Java with results:

1. Ruby result: 101 seconds
2. Java result: 9.8 seconds
3. Perl result: 62 seconds

Ruby lang is a great community, and over time they broke down the code and got all of the versions to fractions of these numbers.

It again really showed:

• How micro-benchmarks are a scary beast
• The choice of the algorythm here made the biggest difference (good 'old Big O). The right choice with Ruby was magnitudes faster than the wrong choice in C.
• The power of CPAN and company, where everything you ever need is already done
• Inline C. Mmm :/
• FAST ENOUGH IS FAST ENOUGH

That being said, having Ruby grow up from the world of the interpreter would be very cool (YARV etc etc).