4 ms·

Best out of 5 times on my Debian testing laptop for a "hello world", in order of worst to best: ruby2.5: 83ms (-e 'puts "hi"') python3.6: 35ms (-

by avar 9y ago

Best out of 5 times on my Debian testing laptop for a "hello world", in order of worst to best: ruby2.5: 83ms (-e 'puts "hi"') python3.6: 35ms (-c 'print("hi")') python2.7: 24ms (-c 'print("hi")') perl5.26.2: 8ms (-e 'print "hi"') C (GCC 7.3): 2ms (int main(void) { puts("hi"); })

masklinn 9y ago
> C (GCC 7.3): 2ms (int main(void) { puts("hi"); }) Not really a fair comparison given the other 3/4 have to do all their parsing and compiling. Unless in those 2ms you include compilation time. Or use tcc -run.
- avar 9y ago
  The user doesn't care, they just invoke "hg" or "git", and language is always a choice, so it's valid from that perspective. But the reason I included it is because it gives a baseline for the overhead of invoking any program, no matter how trivial.
  - emj 9y ago
    I must say even 2 ms feels rather slow just to execute something hot in cache.
kzrdude 9y ago
35ms for Python is ok. What we see in reality is that the imports that a real application will use, adds a whole lot more time. For example, if you want a snappy command line response for a Gtk-using Python program, you probably want to handle command line arguments before even importing Gtk. Maybe it is --help or an argument that you pass on to another running instance, and you want it to be absolutely snappy and fast.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  I have read that conditional imports are "un-pythonic", but I tend to do exactly that in order to keep resource usage lower.
henry_flower 9y ago
$ time ruby --disable-gems -e 'puts "hi"' hi real 0m0.009s user 0m0.008s sys 0m0.000s
- akx 9y ago
  Sure, two can play that game. Let's add `-S`, which disables the site module, to the Python invocations. perl ........... 0m0.012s siteless py27 .. 0m0.018s gemless ruby ... 0m0.021s siteless py36 .. 0m0.025s siteful py27 ... 0m0.034s siteful py36 ... 0m0.049s gemful ruby .... 0m0.089s
- busterarm 9y ago
  Gotta love the lie that Ruby is slow.

by avar 9y ago

masklinn 9y ago

> C (GCC 7.3): 2ms (int main(void) { puts("hi"); }) Not really a fair comparison given the other 3/4 have to do all their parsing and compiling. Unless in those 2ms you include compilation time. Or use tcc -run.

avar 9y ago
The user doesn't care, they just invoke "hg" or "git", and language is always a choice, so it's valid from that perspective. But the reason I included it is because it gives a baseline for the overhead of invoking any program, no matter how trivial.
- emj 9y ago
  I must say even 2 ms feels rather slow just to execute something hot in cache.

kzrdude 9y ago

35ms for Python is ok. What we see in reality is that the imports that a real application will use, adds a whole lot more time. For example, if you want a snappy command line response for a Gtk-using Python program, you probably want to handle command line arguments before even importing Gtk. Maybe it is --help or an argument that you pass on to another running instance, and you want it to be absolutely snappy and fast.

solarkraft 9y ago
I have read that conditional imports are "un-pythonic", but I tend to do exactly that in order to keep resource usage lower.

henry_flower 9y ago

$ time ruby --disable-gems -e 'puts "hi"' hi real 0m0.009s user 0m0.008s sys 0m0.000s

akx 9y ago
Sure, two can play that game. Let's add `-S`, which disables the site module, to the Python invocations. perl ........... 0m0.012s siteless py27 .. 0m0.018s gemless ruby ... 0m0.021s siteless py36 .. 0m0.025s siteful py27 ... 0m0.034s siteful py36 ... 0m0.049s gemful ruby .... 0m0.089s
busterarm 9y ago
Gotta love the lie that Ruby is slow.