> Well you did say: "NodeJS relies on V8, which is perhaps the world's most highly optimised interpreter (/JIT compiler/runner)"
Yes, and that's exactly what I meant. It's undergone the most optimisation. That doesn't mean the result will necessarily be more performant than some other interpreter for a different language which is simpler to interpret. By that logic, I could write an 'x86 interpreter' which would blow LuaJIT out of the water...
> But even in manpower this is pretty hyperbolic compared to Java and .NET.
I wasn't including Java because it's not strictly an interpreted language, though I admit you could write a whole book about the philosophical differences between V8's abstract machine vs Java's bytecode VM. .NET I don't know so much about. As far as I'm aware, .NET hasn't had as much manpower invested, though Java has & would certainly beat V8 if you included it.
