Perl 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. spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 39.52 12,216 555 154.07 97% 98% 97% 98% Ruby 154.65 26,296 839 603.60 98% 98% 97% 97% reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 10.60 1,494,988 287 10.72 37% 0% 0% 63% Ruby 31.78 511,692 264 34.71 5% 54% 47% 4% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 61.27 1,069,048 476 191.99 82% 93% 64% 74% Ruby 106.07 145,640 644 387.67 92% 93% 87% 93% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 16.03 156,916 820 46.37 79% 77% 87% 46% Ruby 15.85 277,116 724 35.00 93% 39% 41% 48% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 3.61 8,548 261 3.69 0% 1% 1% 100% Ruby 3.21 369,020 485 5.35 21% 31% 15% 100% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 90.31 55,080 871 90.89 100% 0% 0% 0% Ruby 51.46 122,960 1069 57.67 20% 22% 47% 23% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 569.32 12,088 570 2,231.43 97% 100% 97% 98% Ruby 307.68 26,776 1444 1,190.76 98% 95% 96% 98% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 729.64 6,528 1429 743.07 29% 47% 2% 24% Ruby 376.42 25,112 1137 401.06 92% 2% 4% 9% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 721.25 44,280 586 2,884.18 100% 100% 100% 100% Ruby 340.43 65,964 931 1,353.94 100% 99% 99% 99% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Perl 129.89 2,519,152 761 457.58 96% 84% 88% 84% Ruby 44.67 531,624 1096 126.74 79% 60% 73% 72% Perl This is perl 5, version 30, subversion 0 (v5.30.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi Ruby ruby 2.7.0p0 (2019-12-25 revision 647ee6f091) [x86_64-linux] --jit all Perl programs & measurements all Ruby programs & measurements