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Ruby vs mruby: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Ruby and mruby. Ruby is a popular dynamic programming language, while mruby is a lightweight implementation of Ruby.
Memory Usage: One of the key differences between Ruby and mruby is the memory usage. mruby is designed to be lightweight and optimized for embedded systems, resulting in lower memory consumption compared to standard Ruby. This makes mruby a suitable choice for resource-constrained environments.
Performance: Another significant difference is the performance of Ruby and mruby. mruby is known for its faster execution speed compared to Ruby. This improved performance is achieved through various optimizations implemented in mruby, making it a preferred choice for performance-critical applications.
Extension Support: Ruby provides extensive support for third-party extensions and libraries through its vibrant ecosystem. On the other hand, mruby has limited support for extensions due to its lightweight nature. While some extensions can be ported to mruby, not all Ruby gems or libraries are compatible with mruby.
Compatibility: Ruby is a mature programming language with a vast user base and community support. It has been around for many years and has a wide range of libraries and frameworks available. mruby, being a lightweight implementation, may not have complete compatibility with all Ruby features and syntax. Some advanced or niche Ruby features may not be supported in mruby.
Embeddability: mruby is designed to be easily embeddable in other applications or systems. It provides a simple and lightweight interface for integrating Ruby functionality into existing projects. Ruby, on the other hand, is typically used as a standalone programming language for developing web applications or scripts.
Footprint: Ruby has a relatively larger footprint compared to mruby. Due to its lightweight design, mruby has a smaller binary size, making it suitable for scenarios where space is a constraint. This smaller footprint also contributes to faster startup times for mruby applications.
In summary, mruby differentiates itself from Ruby by offering lower memory usage, improved performance, limited extension support, compatibility considerations, easy embeddability, and a smaller footprint.
In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.
To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.
Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.
For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.
That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.
We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.
As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.
In December we successfully flipped around half a billion monthly API requests from our Ruby on Rails application to some new Python 3 applications. Our Head of Engineering has written a great article as to why we decided to transition from Ruby on Rails to Python 3! Read more about it in the link below.
When I was evaluating languages to write this app in, I considered either Python or JavaScript at the time. I find Ruby very pleasant to read and write, and the Ruby community has built out a wide variety of test tools and approaches, helping e deliver better software faster. Along with Rails, and the Ruby-first Heroku support, this was an easy decision.
Pros of mruby
Pros of Ruby
- Programme friendly605
- Quick to develop536
- Great community490
- Productivity468
- Simplicity432
- Open source273
- Meta-programming234
- Powerful207
- Blocks156
- Powerful one-liners139
- Flexible69
- Easy to learn58
- Easy to start51
- Maintainability42
- Lambdas37
- Procs30
- Fun to write21
- Diverse web frameworks19
- Reads like English13
- Makes me smarter and happier10
- Rails9
- Very Dynamic8
- Elegant syntax8
- Matz6
- Object Oriented5
- Programmer happiness5
- Elegant code4
- Generally fun but makes you wanna cry sometimes4
- Friendly4
- Fun and useful4
- Easy packaging and modules3
- There are so many ways to make it do what you want3
- Primitive types can be tampered with2
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Cons of mruby
Cons of Ruby
- Memory hog7
- Really slow if you're not really careful7
- Nested Blocks can make code unreadable3
- Encouraging imperative programming2
- Ambiguous Syntax, such as function parentheses1