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Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

Why is this noteworthy? That C++ is faster than pure Python is well known.

C++ expression-power has increased considerably since C++11, and I believe, semantically, Prime Number generation in both C++ and Python could be python-line for c++-(line[s]) translated. C++ approaching the comfort and ease of use of Python is a worthy goal to reach. The flip side is well appreciated too (Cython, where Python can converge to C++ performance is noteworthy as well).

Maybe, because it's only a one order of magnitude faster? I would expect for it to be something between 10x and 100x faster.

Maybe a lot of people is developing in Python, Ruby, PHP and others traditionally interpreted languages and aren't aware of it.

Using C or C++ for some domains would be painful, but regarding speed, memory usage or energy usage those languages tend to be the best. If only Rust would be less C++ like (I prefer "RISC" like languages)

True, although Python and Ruby are extreme cases here. PHP is JIT'd these days, and can be quite a bit faster on this kind of numerical code. JavaScript even more so. I've seen posts on r/rust asking why their Rust port wasn't faster than the JS version, and it turned out not to be lack of optimisation, it was just simple numerical code (doesn't require allocation) which is already super-optimised by modern JS engines.

MJIT

https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2020/12/25/ruby-3-0-0-rele...

(Also pypy)

The performance gain of the MRI Ruby JIT is not really impressive, see e.g. http://software.rochus-keller.info/are-we-fast-yet_crystal_r.... Actually also the factor 4 PyPy speed-up in geomean is not that much overall (e.g. compared to V8).

But it's existence is sufficient to add Ruby to the "is JIT'd these days" list.

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