I took it for a ride They all list all files recursively in a sync fashion, from the node_modules dir (like in the benchmark), excluding dirs, and print a tota

I took it for a ride They all list all files recursively in a sync fashion, from the node_modules dir (like in the benchmark), excluding dirs, and print a total count. Here are the results calculated with hyperfine (https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine): hyperfine "bash test.sh" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: bash test.sh Time (mean ± σ): 7.5 ms ± 0.5 ms [User: 4.5 ms, System: 4.2 ms] Range (min … max): 6.9 ms … 10.5 ms 332 runs hyperfine "perl test.pl" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: perl test.pl Time (mean ± σ): 25.6 ms ± 1.2 ms [User: 16.8 ms, System: 8.8 ms] Range (min … max): 24.0 ms … 30.8 ms 97 runs hyperfine "python3.7 test.py" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: python3.7 test.py Time (mean ± σ): 43.4 ms ± 1.4 ms [User: 32.6 ms, System: 10.9 ms] Range (min … max): 40.9 ms … 46.8 ms 66 runs hyperfine "ruby test.rb" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: ruby test.rb Time (mean ± σ): 66.5 ms ± 2.0 ms [User: 52.1 ms, System: 14.4 ms] Range (min … max): 63.2 ms … 70.3 ms 42 runs hyperfine "node test.js" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: node test.js Time (mean ± σ): 83.7 ms ± 4.0 ms [User: 74.7 ms, System: 15.6 ms] Range (min … max): 79.4 ms … 95.3 ms 36 runs Here are the results of an hello world with each runtime for comparison: hyperfine "bash test.sh" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: bash test.sh Time (mean ± σ): 1.2 ms ± 0.3 ms [User: 1.1 ms, System: 0.3 ms] Range (min … max): 0.9 ms … 3.8 ms 1521 runs hyperfine "perl test.pl" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: perl test.pl Time (mean ± σ): 1.3 ms ± 0.3 ms [User: 1.3 ms, System: 0.3 ms] Range (min … max): 1.0 ms … 5.3 ms 1103 runs hyperfine "python3.7 test.py" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: python3.7 test.py Time (mean ± σ): 19.5 ms ± 0.9 ms [User: 16.2 ms, System: 3.4 ms] Range (min … max): 18.3 ms … 23.7 ms 144 runs hyperfine "ruby test.rb" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: ruby test.rb Time (mean ± σ): 55.2 ms ± 2.2 ms [User: 47.2 ms, System: 8.1 ms] Range (min … max): 52.2 ms … 61.9 ms 51 runs hyperfine "node test.js" --warmup 5 Benchmark #1: node test.js Time (mean ± σ): 55.4 ms ± 1.8 ms [User: 49.5 ms, System: 7.0 ms] Range (min … max): 53.0 ms … 60.0 ms 53 runs Now, my machine is not setup for a clean benchmark. The disk cache is warmed up. Hyperthreading is on. Other softwares are running. Plus the scripts all found a slightly different number of files :) I suspect they all treat symlinks/dotted dirs differently, and I didn't take the time to normalize. Although I don't think this makes up for the difference. Still the result is a bit interesting. The non JS tests are not using any 3rd party libs. Ruby and Node seems to have the same cost for VM startup. I'm quite surprised that node is last frankly, especially on a uber optimized code. I'm expecting V8 code to be blazing fast as it's Google made and C++.