> comparing the execution time of a 4 line C program with the start up cost of a VM and interpreter is inane. That's not what I compared. Maybe you should rea

> comparing the execution time of a 4 line C program with the start up cost of a VM and interpreter is inane. That's not what I compared. Maybe you should read the article again? > And in this case for the C program you might find that bash forking is the actual cost not the C code running through the loop. I didn't publish any benchmark numbers of any C programs, because I didn't need to: the two C++ programs I was comparing compiled to exactly the same machine code, making empirical observations of their execution time immaterial.