What is the startup performance of different programming languages?

[stax76]

To answer my own question, I made some performance tests to find out how fast a test app or script can start, print Hello World and terminate.

These are my numbers:

C: 10 ms
C++: 10 ms

Rust: 10 ms

Python: 30 ms

.NET Framework: 30 ms
.NET Core: 40 ms

Lua 5.1: 13 ms
Lua 5.4: 13 ms

PowerShell 5.1: 230 ms
PowerShell 7.2: 400 ms

GO: 15 ms

How it was measured:

using System.Diagnostics;

int count = 0;

Stopwatch w = new Stopwatch();
w.Start();

for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
    count++;
    Process p = new Process();
    p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
    p.StartInfo.FileName = @"D:\Projects\test\test.exe";
    p.Start();
    p.WaitForExit();
    p.Dispose();
}

w.Stop();
Console.WriteLine(w.ElapsedMilliseconds / count);

Console.ReadKey();

I was surprised by some of these numbers, positive and negative.

Maybe somebody of you find this topic also interesting. Most of the time it's not that important, I admit, but sometimes it can be! That's why I wanted to know exactly. I certainly use some apps I wish would start faster, for instance Anki and JDownloader, and I had a PS script to paste the date that was way too slow. It was launched with Flow Launcher using my Favorites plugin and my run-hidden app to hide the console window.

[videoh]

Depends on lots of things you are not controlling for, e.g., amount of static data to be zeroed.

[wswartzendruber]

On Debian 11, Linux will start one of my Rust programs, output the help screen, and exit in 2 ms. I am not writing to the console, but diverting STDOUT to /dev/null. This was a cold start on a fresh boot, so nothing was likely cached in RAM.

[metis]

What about FreePascal (FPC)?
Not so popular, but very powerful and fast, comparable to C++.