> Ruby's performance is similar to python's. Granted, neither one is going to win any competitions...

It's not just that they won't win any speed competitions, but that Ruby and Python are bound to come in last place. The only question is, which one comes in last and which 2nd to last. Runners up include Perl, PHP, and sometimes non-JIT Lua. Choose any benchmark, the results are consistent: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...