MoonScript vs Lua: A speed test

I've discovered MoonScript in the last month and so far I'm loving it (apart from a few whitespacing quirks). One of the things I like most about it is the built-in Object Orientation, something that is lacking from Lua (but can be added with libraries/metatables).

I've been interested in how fast the generated Lua code is from MoonScript for a while now, so today I'm going to do a little speed-test of sorts. This won't be an incredibly indepth comparison - so don't jump down my throat if I've fucked up somewhere. Feel free to correct me though.

I'll be comparing speed differences from MoonScript OO to a minimal and fast Lua OO library, 30log.

The main 3 pillars of Object Orientation are: Objects, Methods and Inheritance. I'll be seeing how long it takes each implementation to create these in increasing sizes.

Creating objects

Simply defining a class called X, and creating and inserting ever-increasing amounts of X, from 10 to 1,000,000 instances.

--lua
local class = require '30log'
t = {}
X = class("X")
Start = os.clock()
for i=1, 100 do table.insert(t, X:new()) end
End = os.clock()
print(End-Start)

--moonscript
t = {}
class X
  new: () =>
Start = os.clock()
for i=1, 100 do table.insert(t, X!)
End = os.clock()
print(End-Start)

As you can see, the time taken for 30log to create objects increases massively to 16 seconds! - Although realistically most people will have less than 1,000 objects, the speed difference is still pretty large.

Methods

Giving X an method called add which simply increments its self.x.

t = {}
local class = require '30log'
X = class("X")
function X:init(x) self.x = x end
function X:add() self.x = self.x + 1 end
for i=1, 10 do table.insert(t, X(0)) end
Start = os.clock()
  for i=1, #t do t[i]:add() end
End = os.clock()
print(End-Start)

t = {}
class X
  new: (@x) =>
  add: () =>
    @x += 1
for i=1, 100000 do table.insert(t, X(0))
Start = os.clock()
for x in *t do x\add()
End = os.clock()
print(End-Start)

| No. methods ran | Time taken (s)        |
|-----------------|------------|----------|
|                 | MoonScript | Lua      |
|-----------------|------------|----------|
| 10              | 1.3e-05    | 7.98e-06 |
| 100             | 1.9e-05    | 2.3e-05  |
| 1,000           | 0.000171   | 0.000248 |
| 10,000          | 0.001755   | 0.00275  |
| 100,000         | 0.017076   | 0.029891 |
| 1,000,000       | 0.172534   | 0.312667 |