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Performance comparison: counting words in Python, Go, C++, C, Awk, Forth, Rust

Summary: I describe a simple interview problem (counting frequencies of unique words), solve it in various languages, and compare performance across them. For each language, I’ve included a simple, idiomatic solution as well as a more optimized approach via profiling…

Language Simple Optimized Notes
grep 0.04 0.04 grep baseline; optimized sets LC_ALL=C
wc -w 0.29 0.20 wc baseline; optimized sets LC_ALL=C
Zig 0.54 by ifreund and matu3ba
Nim 0.76 0.58 by csterritt and euantorano
C 0.97 0.23
Go 1.14 0.39
Crystal 1.29 by Andrea Manzini
PHP 1.36 by Max Semenik
Rust 1.43 0.38 by Andrew Gallant
C# 1.51 0.82 by J Taylor, Y Ostapenko, O Turan
OCaml 1.72 by Nate Dobbins and Pavlo Khrystenko
C++ 1.73 0.42 optimized by Jussi Pakkanen
Perl 1.81 by Charles Randall
F# 1.82 1.59 by Yuriy Ostapenko
Kotlin 1.86 by Kazik Pogoda
Python 2.07 1.30
Lua 2.50 1.97 by themadsens; runs under luajit
JavaScript 2.52 1.90 by Dani Biro and Flo Hinze
Ruby 3.13 2.43 by Bill Mill
AWK 3.55 1.13 optimized uses mawk
D 4.16 1.01 by Ross Lonstein
Swift 4.23 by Daniel Muellenborn
Forth 4.26 1.46
Shell 14.60 1.85 optimized does LC_ALL=C sort -S 2G

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dimitarvp

dimitarvp

Yeah, right, as if. They just use bridges to C libraries underneath.

It’s tempting to think your favourite language is fast. But very often it’s just the stdlib shelling out to native implementations. Erlang does it too.

Exadra37

Exadra37

Thanks for the post :slight_smile:

It’s missing Elixir… just saying :grin:

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

PHP faster than Rust and C++?!

Nice joke. :flushed::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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