Has anyone else noticed a sharp drop in Elixir performance on MacOS over the past couple of years? The problem really seems to be in startup time rather than actual execution time. I don’t remember the Elixir version or the MacOS version where it started, but I kept expecting the next update of one or the other to fix it, but it hasn’t. I’m now on MacOS Catalina and Elixir 1.9.2.

Here are some comparison startup times:

larry@habu ~ % time erl -noshell -eval 'erlang:display(erlang:system_info(system_version))' -eval 'init:stop()'"Erlang/OTP 22 [erts-10.5.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [ds:4:4:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe] [dtrace]\n"

erl -noshell -eval 'erlang:display(erlang:system_info(system_version))' -eval  0.20s user 0.07s system 8% cpu 3.045 total

larry@habu ~ % time perl --version                                                                        This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 4 (v5.18.4) built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

(with 2 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2013, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the

GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on

this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to the

Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.

perl --version  0.00s user 0.00s system 56% cpu 0.012 total

larry@habu ~ % time ruby --version                                                                        

ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580) [universal.x86_64-darwin19]

ruby --version  0.01s user 0.01s system 74% cpu 0.019 total

larry@habu ~ % time python --version                                                                        

Python 3.5.1

python --version  0.01s user 0.01s system 66% cpu 0.024 total

larry@habu ~ % time ghc --version                                                                        

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 8.6.3

ghc --version  0.03s user 0.03s system 65% cpu 0.097 total

larry@habu ~ % time elixir --version                                                                           

Erlang/OTP 22 [erts-10.5.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [ds:4:4:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe] [dtrace]

Elixir 1.9.2 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 22)

elixir --version  0.18s user 0.10s system 4% cpu 6.180 total

larry@habu ~ % time erl -noshell -eval 'erlang:display(erlang:system_info(system_version))' -eval 'init:stop()'

"Erlang/OTP 22 [erts-10.5.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:4:4] [ds:4:4:10] [async-threads:1] [hipe] [dtrace]\n"

erl -noshell -eval 'erlang:display(erlang:system_info(system_version))' -eval  0.19s user 0.06s system 9% cpu 2.723 total

Any thoughts?