What we're essentially measuring here is runtime startup and (in some cases) byte-compiling.
Rate python swipl ruby perl lua luac bash ocaml awk subshell ocamlopt c py_pyc shell
python 46.3/s -- -17% -56% -70% -76% -78% -78% -79% -83% -87% -88% -88% -90% -92%
swipl 55.9/s 21% -- -46% -63% -70% -73% -73% -74% -80% -84% -85% -86% -88% -90%
ruby 104/s 125% 86% -- -31% -45% -49% -51% -52% -62% -71% -72% -74% -79% -82%
perl 152/s 229% 172% 46% -- -20% -26% -28% -30% -44% -57% -60% -61% -69% -74%
lua 189/s 309% 239% 82% 25% -- -8% -10% -13% -31% -47% -50% -52% -61% -67%
luac 206/s 345% 268% 98% 35% 9% -- -2% -6% -25% -42% -46% -48% -58% -64%
bash 211/s 356% 277% 103% 39% 11% 3% -- -3% -23% -41% -44% -46% -57% -63%
ocaml 218/s 372% 290% 110% 44% 15% 6% 3% -- -20% -39% -42% -45% -55% -62%
awk 273/s 491% 389% 162% 80% 44% 33% 30% 25% -- -23% -28% -31% -44% -52%
subshell 357/s 672% 539% 243% 135% 89% 74% 69% 64% 31% -- -6% -9% -26% -38%
ocamlopt 379/s 719% 577% 264% 149% 100% 84% 80% 73% 39% 6% -- -4% -22% -34%
c 394/s 751% 604% 278% 159% 108% 91% 87% 80% 44% 10% 4% -- -19% -31%
py_pyc 485/s 950% 768% 366% 219% 156% 136% 130% 122% 78% 36% 28% 23% -- -16%
shell 575/s 1143% 928% 452% 278% 203% 179% 172% 163% 110% 61% 52% 46% 18% --
I added hello world programs for C, SWI Prolog, and OCaml (byte and native compilers). Timings on OpenBSD/amd64.Edit: Since you can precompile Lua, I added that as 'luac'. It's not usually done, since Lua compiles VERY quickly, and the source is more portable. It's a data point, though. I also added a .pyc for Python - Python byte-compiles more slowly. There's little difference between lua and luac, but the difference between python and py_pyc is huge.
I also added shell with a new subshell, both sh and bash. And, source, as requested.
OCaml:
let _ = print_string "Hello world.\n"
Compile with "ocamlc -o ochello foo.ml" for bytecode, "ocamlopt -o ochello.opt foo.ml" for native.SWI Prolog:
swipl => sub { system qq[swipl -g "write('Hello world.\n')." -t "halt."] },
luac: print "Hello, world."
And then compile with "luac hellow.lua", run as "lua luac.out".