On julialang.org, it is stated that Julia is about 170 times faster than Mathematica for the the test "fib". I get about a factor 2.
Julia: fib(n) = n < 2 ? n : fib(n-1) + fib(n-2) println(@time(fib(20))) elapsed time: 0.001868071 seconds (33280 bytes allocated) 6765 Mathematica: In[1]:= AbsoluteTiming[fib = Compile[{{n,_Integer}},If[n<2,n,fib[n-1]+fib[n-2]]]] Out[1]= {0.000134563,CompiledFunction[Argument count: 1 Argument types: {_Integer}]} In[2]:= AbsoluteTiming[fib[20]] Out[2]= {0.00385017,6765}