I think the short answer is making a dynamic language really fast is really hard. You can do it, but historically you&#x27;ve needed to be Sun or Google to pull it off. Sun made java fast. Google made javascript pretty fast.<p>So ruby either needed to piggy back on someone else&#x27;s work (jvm or whatever) or get some next-level-smart vm developers. Even then, people have written about how ruby presents some serious challenges.