I compared implementations of the benchmark which all run on the same LuaJIT VM. One implementation is just plain Lua using the loops and control flows provided

I compared implementations of the benchmark which all run on the same LuaJIT VM. One implementation is just plain Lua using the loops and control flows provided by the language. Another implementation is written in SOM and transpiled to Lua; all SOM (i.e. Smalltalk) closures are faithfully translated to Lua closures (i.e. not using Lua loops and control flow). Yet another implementation does the same but directly LuaJIT bytecode is generated instead of Lua source code which enables some additional optimizations. The performance difference is very likely caused by the number of closures in use (it's a bit more complex than that, but the principle is the same). I didn't compare with Strongtalk, but with Pharo 7 and 8, which use the Open Smalltalk VM (i.e. Cog/Spur) that is the result of a multi-decade performance optimization effort by Eliot Miranda and team. As you can see in my results Pharo shows essentially the same performance as the plain Lua version on LuaJIT (the tracing version 2.0 of it took "only" seven years to develop in comparison). Here again the link to the report for convenience: http://software.rochus-keller.info/are-we-fast-yet_crystal_lua_node_som_pharo_i386_results_2020-12-29.pdf http://software.rochus-keller.info/are-we-fast-yet_crystal_l....