Run times for Hello, World in 2009

If startup time for scripts is really an issue for you then Nailgun might help.

1) ECL test refers to ~/Library directory. I figured out how to create .fas or .o but can’t guess from ecl manpage how to build executable. Maybe it could be improved?

2) Here are suggestions for scala (another sexy jvm-based lang)

Compiled HelloScala.scala:

object HelloScala {
   def main(args: Array[String]) {
       println("Hello, world!")
   }
}

Interpreted hello.scala:

println("Hello, world!")

Makefile:

all : (...) HelloScala.class
    (...)
    @echo "Scala (compiled)"; ./average -n 20 scala -cp . HelloScala > /dev/null
    @echo "Scala (interpreted)"; ./average -n 20 scala hello.scala > /dev/null

(on my system compiled scala is ~ 2.5x slower than compiled java, interpreted scala is ~ 3x slower than groovy)

3) I’d suggest adding sth like “make test” to check whether everything outputs what it should, for example:

test:
    @echo "C"; ./hello-c
    @echo "C++"; ./hello-cc
    @echo "Haskell (compiled)"; ./hello-hs 
    @echo "Perl"; perl ./hello.pl 
    @echo "Ruby (1.8.7)"; ruby ./hello.rb 
    @echo "Ruby (1.9.1-p0)"; ruby1.9 ./hello.rb 
    @echo "Python"; python ./hello.py 
    @echo "Python3"; python3 ./hello3.py 
    @echo "Java (JDK6)"; java -cp . HelloWorld 
    @echo "Haskell (interpreted)"; runhaskell ./hello-hs.hs 
    @echo "Groovy (JDK6)"; ./hello.groovy 
    @echo "Scala (compiled)"; scala -cp . HelloScala
    @echo "Scala (interpreted)"; scala hello.scala

Those numbers for Java surprise me. Does that include jvm startup times? Also, don’t you think that hotspot compilation would ultimately reduce that runtime, if it were something more complicated than hello world?

I ask because I’ve seen a lot of studies which indicate, for example, that grails is about twice as fast as rails, which I had attributed ultimately to Java.

The benchmarks game, startup

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=hello&lang=all

Have a go with compiled java. It’s quite well supported by the GNU compiler suite (gcj).