Recursive Fibonacci Benchmark using top languages on Github

Top 10: JavaScript, Java, Python, Ruby, Php, C++, C#, C, Go reference

Others: Crystal, Rust, Swift, Mono, Elixir, Perl, R, Julia, D, Nim

This code performs a recursive fibonacci to the 46th position with the result of 2,971,215,073.

Fibonacci can be written many different ways. The goal of this project is to compare how each language handles the exact same code.

Here is the Ruby version:

def fib(n)
  return 1 if n <= 1
  fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
end

puts fib(46)

Here is the Crystal version:

def fib(n : UInt64)
  return 1_u64 if n <= 1
  fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
end

puts fib(46)

All tests are run on:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
OS: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Processor: 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

Last benchmark was ran on September 30, 2018

Natively compiled, statically typed

Language	Time, s	Compile	Run
Nim	4.696	nim cpp -d:release fib.nim	time ./fib
C	4.697	gcc -O3 -o fib fib.c	time ./fib
C++	4.700	g++ -O3 -o fib fib.cpp	time ./fib
Crystal	5.843	crystal build --release fib.cr	time ./fib
Cython	6.013	cython --embed -o fib.pyx.c fib.pyx && \
		gcc -O3 -o fib fib.pyx.c \
		$(pkg-config --cflags --libs python3)	time ./fib
Fortran	6.191	gfortran -O3 -o fib fib.f03	time ./fib
Rust	6.677	rustc -O fib.rs	time ./fib
D	7.264	ldc2 -O3 -release -flto=full -of=fib fib.d	time ./fib
Haskell	8.207	ghc -O3 -o fib fib.hs	time ./fib
OCaml	8.241	ocamlopt -O3 -o fib fib.ml	time ./fib
Swift	10.742	swiftc -O -g fib.swift	time ./fib
Go	11.055	go build fib.go	time ./fib
Lisp	13.463	sbcl --load fib.lisp	time ./fib

VM compiled bytecode, statically/dynamically type

Language	Time, s	Compile	Run
Java	7.556	javac Fib.java	time java Fib
C#	11.387	dotnet build -c Release -o ./bin	time dotnet ./bin/fib.dll
C# (Mono)	12.310	mcs fib.cs	time mono fib.exe
Erlang	13.522	erlc +native +'{hipe,[o3]}' fib.erl	time erl -noinput -s fib

VM compiled before execution, mixed/dynamically typed

Language	Time, s	Run
Dart	9.651	time dart fib.dart
Julia	11.461	time julia -O3 fib.jl
Escript	13.706	time escript fib.es
Elixir*	13.955	time elixir fib.exs
Node	19.161	time node fib.js

Elixir is using ERL_COMPILER_OPTIONS='[native,{hipe, [o3]}]'

NOTE: These languages include compilation time that should be taken into consideration when comparing.

Interpreted, dynamically typed

Language	Time, s	Run
Scheme	150.454	time guile fib.scm
Php	198.279	time php fib.php
Ruby	200.168	time ruby fib.rb
Lua	280.999	time lua fib.lua
Python	515.008	time python fib.py
Python3	770.082	time python3 fib.py
Perl	1039.727	time perl fib.pl
Perl 6	2851.994	time perl6 fib.p6
Tcl	TODO	time tclsh fib.tcl
R	1796.495	time r -f fib.r
K	TODO	time k fib.k
Bash	TODO	time bash fib.sh

NOTE: Interpreted languages have a startup time cost that should be taken into consideration when comparing.

Optimized code that breaks the benchmark

The code examples provided in the optimized folder use techniques that break the benchmark. They do not perform the same internal tasks as the other examples so are not a good for an apples to apples comparison. They all perform at sub-second response times. It demonstrates that all benchmarks will have some caveat.

Several of these examples add very little changes to the original code that are worth mentioning:

The C++ constexpr is using a constexpr which optimizes the recursive call to a constant.
The Lisp compiletime shows how you can perform the calculation at compile time. simply add #. before outputing the results.
The Python lru_cache is using lru_cache directive with no code changes.
The Ruby mem and JS mem are maintaining a simple cache to avoid recalculating the results for that value.

Versions

go version go1.11 darwin/amd64
g++-8 (Homebrew GCC 8.2.0) 8.2.0
crystal Crystal 0.26.1 (2018-08-27) LLVM: 6.0.1
g++ Apple LLVM version 10.0.0 (clang-1000.11.45.2)
gcc Apple LLVM version 10.0.0 (clang-1000.11.45.2)
nim Nim Compiler Version 0.18.0 [MacOSX: amd64]
swiftc Apple Swift version 4.2 (swiftlang-1000.11.37.1 clang-1000.11.45.1)
rustc 1.29.0
javac 10.0.1
mcs Mono C# compiler version 5.12.0.226
dotnet 2.1.4
dart Dart VM version: 2.0.0 (Fri Aug 3 10:53:23 2018 +0200)
julia version 0.6.3
node v9.4.0
elixir Elixir 1.7.3 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 21)
ruby 2.5.1p57 (2018-03-29 revision 63029)
php 7.1.16 (cli) (built: Apr 1 2018 13:14:42)
python 2.7.15
python3 3.7.0
perl 5, version 26, subversion 2 (v5.26.2)
perl6 This is Rakudo Star version 2018.06 built on MoarVM version 2018.06
r version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
lcd2 the LLVM D compiler (1.11.0)
ocaml The OCaml toplevel, version 4.07.0
ghc The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 8.4.3
gfortran GNU Fortran (Homebrew GCC 8.2.0) 8.2.0
tchsh 8.5

Caveats

Fibonacci Benchmark

pichi/fib