Man, you are being difficult. Ruby is well known to be a very slow language (if you want numbers check http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...). Optimizing compilers are computationally demanding tasks, and the proof (albeit extreme one) is Stalin Scheme compiler, that can take minutes to compile code, but the result is sometimes faster than C/C++ code, or at least on par. Now, this compiler is written either in Scheme itself or in C i do not remember, but definetelt not in ruby. If it take to compile your code a minute for a compiler written in [C/Stalin Scheme] it will take at least ten minutes for one written in ruby.