If you're just using it for quick scripting, which is where startup time mostly matters, and you only use the stdlib and no external gems, you can do use --disable-gems and it starts in half the time as python for me.

Hey, you're right. Down from 100ms to 30ms which is 10ms faster than Python. So it's game over for Python, not Ruby, after all ;-)

Has Python launch time gotten faster? It used to take a second to start up, where Ruby would be instant on the same machine.

Well, both are quite slow for what it’s worth, compared to most other programming languages.

Which is still plenty fast for CRUD web applications even at large scales, don’t get me wrong, I’m just pointing out that JS for example often has a 10x multiplier between it and Ruby/Python.

It hasnt' stopped Python, by some metrics, from competing in popularity with JS. Some even put Python ahead.

As I wrote, performance is not the end-all goal.

Python is the de facto glue language.