Chris already proved we can do exactly that for Ruby with TruffleRuby. I don’t think there’s any reason GraalPython couldn’t do the same given more work?
As I understand it, Crystal would be a good Ruby alternative if you want performance. This is of course a whole new language designed with performance in mind from the beginning and here is a repeating theme: you need to consider performance at the start, not 20 years later.
Without running again using GraalVM EE which TruffleRuby needs for things like Partial Escape Analysis these benchmarks aren’t very useful. I’ve made the same mistake myself before when benchmarking TR.
Crystal has wildly different semantics to Ruby, so it’s not a good alternative at all.
Ah, that's a good point. It would be interesting to see fairer benchmarks for TruffleRuby after reading about some of the optimisations they're able to make.
These are only simple benchmarks, but do indicate a rough ballpark for TruffleRuby: https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks
As I understand it, Crystal would be a good Ruby alternative if you want performance. This is of course a whole new language designed with performance in mind from the beginning and here is a repeating theme: you need to consider performance at the start, not 20 years later.