Running times

gistfile1.txt

Assembly:             0.000169164 *  10000 =     1.691642309
C (diet, static):     0.000178204 *   5000 =     0.891020651
C (musl, static):     0.000194115 *   5000 =     0.970577889
C (musl, dynamic):    0.000342195 *   5000 =     1.710977786
C (static):           0.000090583 *   5000 =     0.452919855
C (dynamic):          0.000702688 *   3000 =     2.108064792
Fortran (static):     0.000455501 *   5000 =     2.277508594
Fortran (dynamic):    0.001639982 *   2000 =     3.279964656
Haskell (static):     0.001355104 *   2000 =     2.710208459
Haskell (dynamic):    0.002697174 *   1000 =     2.697174090
OCaml:                0.001517076 *   1000 =     1.517076981
Go:                   0.003836930 *   1000 =     3.836930851
lua:                  0.002343486 *   1000 =     2.343486340
BusyBox shell:        0.000697259 *   3000 =     2.091778592
dash:                 0.001224925 *   1000 =     1.224925060
mksh:                 0.001850628 *   1000 =     1.850628543
plan9 rc:             0.002187443 *   1000 =     2.187443115
nawk:                 0.001488329 *   1000 =     1.488329756
awk (GNU):            0.006105896 *    500 =     3.052948319
tcl:                  0.007309309 *    500 =     3.654654736
Bash:                 0.007432038 *    500 =     3.716019380
Zsh:                  0.007343697 *    500 =     3.671848818
tcsh:                 0.009758095 *    500 =     4.879047883
PHP5:                 0.008490535 *    200 =     1.698107155
Perl 5:               0.003812102 *    500 =     1.906051064
Chicken (compiled):   0.009398219 *    200 =     1.879643984
Chicken (script):     0.009592809 *    200 =     1.918561815
SBCL (compiled):      0.008679940 *    100 =     0.867994098
SBCL (script):        0.007080823 *    100 =     0.708082340
MRI 1.9:              0.013838002 *    200 =     2.767600581
Emacs:                0.020819761 *    100 =     2.081976107
V8:                   0.019428874 *    100 =     1.942887482
Node.JS:              0.026732453 *    100 =     2.673245378
cpython 2:            0.020974210 *    100 =     2.097421064
cpython 3:            0.042390707 *     50 =     2.119535378
Java (jamvm):         0.015089572 *    100 =     1.508957216
Java 7 (Oracle):      0.050786282 *     50 =     2.539314147
Mono (C#):            0.012879172 *    100 =     1.287917251

Code:

https://github.com/pcarrier/benchmarking-uselessness

Observations:

- The kernel is an amazing beast. Look at how fast you can create
damn processes.

- Dynamic linking and the glibc are much more expensive than I'd
thought. The assembly binary gets ran roughly 4 times faster than
the dynamically linked C code.

- Even the statically linked Busybox shell manages to be faster!
I'd like to check which libc it is linked to.

- Oh my god Python 3 is so slooow! I have a hard time explaining
how it can be _that_ slow. Whilst Python 2 opens 65 files, Python
3 opens 85. Including a C header, /usr/include/python3.2mu/pyconfig.h.
I assume it's parsed!?

    strace /usr/bin/python3 empty >/dev/null 2>&1|grep -E 'open.* = [^-]'|wc -l

- Even though it's the slowest, a modern JVM is impressively fast
with a modern CPU. Similar tests were much slower with both Java 6
and Java 7 under both Snow Leopard and Lion, I'd like to explain why.

- I mean seriously, SERIOUSLY, Python 3 is closer to Java 7 than it is
to Python 2 ! One can use the JVM for short-lived command-line utilities.
Full disclosure, I already do that :)

- Chicken has a non-negligible initialization time, which doesn't vary
much with compilation.

- Emacs is much faster than I would have thought. I was strongly biased.