Lua versus Ruby fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. Look at the other programs. They may seem more-like a fair comparison to you. mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 128.80 21,684 623 447.54 85% 90% 88% 85% Ruby 340.43 65,964 931 1,353.94 100% 99% 99% 99% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 292.55 1,224 1305 309.18 60% 22% 2% 21% Ruby 376.42 25,112 1137 401.06 92% 2% 4% 9% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 42.29 2,736 1061 58.72 6% 11% 24% 97% Ruby 51.46 122,960 1069 57.67 20% 22% 47% 23% spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 162.63 2,636 329 172.22 36% 1% 4% 65% Ruby 154.65 26,296 839 603.60 98% 98% 97% 97% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 166.12 596,444 613 176.43 3% 79% 21% 4% Ruby 106.07 145,640 644 387.67 92% 93% 87% 93% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 101.95 890,168 664 374.32 90% 93% 93% 91% Ruby 44.67 531,624 1096 126.74 79% 60% 73% 72% reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 72.92 2,164,164 752 77.21 2% 4% 4% 96% Ruby 31.78 511,692 264 34.71 5% 54% 47% 4% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua 833.78 1,152 462 893.00 14% 67% 21% 5% Ruby 307.68 26,776 1444 1,190.76 98% 95% 96% 98% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua Failed Ruby 15.85 277,116 724 35.00 93% 39% 41% 48% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Lua Failed Ruby 3.21 369,020 485 5.35 21% 31% 15% 100% Lua Lua 5.4.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2020 Lua.org, PUC-Rio Ruby ruby 2.7.0p0 (2019-12-25 revision 647ee6f091) [x86_64-linux] --jit all Lua programs & measurements all Ruby programs & measurements