In general "faster without optimization" is completely meaningless because it doesn't mean fast with optimization, which is what actually matters. Example: Ave

In general "faster without optimization" is completely meaningless because it doesn't mean fast with optimization, which is what actually matters. Example: Average code written in node.js is typically just as slow as, say, PHP (in fact node.js was 3x slower than php in techempower benchmarks). However, it has potential to be much faster when optimized whereas PHP doesn't reward such optimization almost at all.