[jrockway]

Computers are easier (though perhaps less fun) to make than humans. Ruby is slow but it's close enough to Java that the numbers will still work out. Humans: probably not.

[thebluesky]

30x slower seems a bit of a stretch for "close enough": http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=al...

[rimantas]

You should look at performance difference in relevant operations. I doubt that they calculate mandelbrots at twitter.

[thebluesky]

> You should look at performance difference in relevant operations

If you have a link to a Twitter-realistic benchmark I'd be interested see the results.