All that proves is that V8 is a beast, similar to the JVM. Here's what an alternative world could look like: $ time luajit -e 'print"hello world"' hello wo

All that proves is that V8 is a beast, similar to the JVM. Here's what an alternative world could look like: $ time luajit -e 'print"hello world"' hello world real 0m0.002s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.002s But it's worse than that, because the time at issue is for the AOT-compiled native code binary. To be fair, I presume that the included runtime is written in C++, and modern C++ coding styles are pretty inefficient. Lots of small, dynamic allocations. Too much of the wrong kinds of abstraction. It's what happens when you shoehorn problems into established solution models, rather than approach development, including boiler plate code, as crafting a bespoke solution model fit to the problem. But the latter makes onboarding new engineers more difficult--you can't start hacking without first grasping the larger architecture--and therefore frowned upon in larger companies, or in small companies that equivocate big company approaches to "best practice".