Which HelloWorld Is Faster: Rust, C, C++, Bourne Shell, Python3?

Which program works faster? Does Rust compiler do things extra fast? Here are our simplest programs on Rust, C, C++, Bash, Python3. They were run 100.000 times and timings are measured.

 

Listings

Listing HelloWorld on Rust, main.rs

fn main() {
    println!("Hello, World!");
}

 

Listing HelloWorld on C, main.c

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Hello, World!\n");
    return 0;
}

 

Listing HelloWorld on C++, main.cpp

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
    cout << "Hello, World!" << endl;
    return 0;
}

 

Listing HelloWorld on Bourne Shell, 1.sh

#/bin/sh
echo 'Hello, World!'

 

Listing HelloWorld on Python3, 1.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
print("Hello, World!")

 

Compilation

Those Rust, C, C++ programs were compiled with optimization flags to a.out{rs,c,cpp}:

rustc main.rs -C opt-level=3 -o a.out.rs

gcc main.c -O3 -o a.out.c

g++ main.cpp -O3 -o a.out.cpp

 

Timings on 100.000 runs

C program was the best, and finished in 50 seconds.

time for i in `seq 100000`; do ./a.out.c; done

real    0m49.985s
user    0m34.893s
sys    0m17.967s

 

C++ program finished in 1 minute 27 seconds.

time for i in `seq 100000`; do ./a.out.cpp; done

real    1m27.213s
user    1m7.641s
sys    0m22.359s

 

Rust program finished in 1 minute 4 seconds.

time for i in `seq 10000`; do ./a.out.rs; done

real    1m4.209s
user    0m46.681s
sys    0m20.219s

 

Bourne Shell (sh) script finished in 2 minutes.

time for i in `seq 100000`; do ./1.sh; done

real    1m59.985s
user    1m33.079s
sys    0m29.630s

 

Python3 finished in 13 minutes 52 seconds.

time for i in `seq 100000`; do ./1.py; done

real    13m51.726s
user    10m55.810s
sys    2m58.401s

 

Conclusions

My system is Linux, Intel Core i5-9400 CPU @ 2.90GHz.

uname -a
Linux devuan 5.10.0-15-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.120-1 (2022-06-09) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Sure, HelloWorld is the simplest program for compare performance. When need performance, should write own procedures for call operating system libraries like print text. Rust may include lot of unnecessary stuff, C++ also includes very heavy libraries. Results:

#	Language	Time
1.	C	50 sec
2.	Rust	64 sec
3.	C++	87 sec
4.	Bourne Shell	120 sec
5.	Python3	832 sec

I search beautiful address on Tron Network, Solana, Terra, that takes much time. I could not find even 3-letters word in Terra address, because they gives only Python program.

With these results, it is clear that Python3 works so slowly, better code with own hands on Rust or C.