I tried with type hinting the clojure code, it was slower.

Startup time for the jvm seemed fair, because node has to start up as well. This should count into the overall time imho.

you should calculate the time within clojure and node and output it. This will take away the startup time. You should also warm up the jvm.

I may play with the type hints tonight if I get time. It shouldn't make it slower.

Uh, if it's slower you should probably look into that.

How did you add the type hints?

node has no jvm, node starts up in milliseconds. node _is_ faster

For most anything server based (which is how I would use Node if I were to pick it up) startup time should not matter because the server just remains running... making that comparison pointless at best and disingenuous at worst.

...to start up anyway.

which is unimportant to a large class of apps.