Macruby has compiling on the horizon - best of both worlds.

http://merbist.com/2009/05/27/macruby-changing-the-ruby-ecosystem/

@compiling

This was probably the dumbest shit in development context I read/heard in 2009 (or even longer). Compiling if possible is one thing, but that Ruby developers are dumb/unexperienced/... and only use it cause it's fun is just...so stupid, blind, retarded, unexperienced, ignorant and...I can go on. I would never employ such an idiot. Just let him build his platform...some will care, but most won't. When he's done with one app, I'm already a millionaire.

I like the idea of compiling a web application but only as a final optimization in production (e.g. byte-compile). One reason scripting languages are used is to get back development time in the edit-compile-test loop.

Now *when* my Ruby code can be compiled on the server, that would make me happy and give me the best of both world. Speaking of which, I wonder how Rubinius is doing...