My silly tests with Go and Nodejs with RaspberryPi RevB 512MB, all these due to the silly discussion in golang-nuts - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/zeLMYnjO_JA[1-25-false] TLDR: Even with extra work golang is faster :P

go benchmark (counter mode) test results

pi@waripi ~ $ ab -n 1000 -n 10000 http://192.168.1.244:8000/                                            
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 192.168.1.244 (be patient)
Completed 1000 requests
Completed 2000 requests
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 4000 requests
Completed 5000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
Completed 7000 requests
Completed 8000 requests
Completed 9000 requests
Completed 10000 requests
Finished 10000 requests


Server Software:        
Server Hostname:        192.168.1.244
Server Port:            8000

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        20 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   46.718 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      1370000 bytes
HTML transferred:       200000 bytes
Requests per second:    214.05 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       4.672 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       4.672 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          28.64 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    1   0.1      1       3
Processing:     2    4   1.8      4      75
Waiting:        0    2   1.6      2      74
Total:          3    4   1.8      5      75

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      5
  66%      5
  75%      5
  80%      5
  90%      5
  95%      6
  98%      7
  99%      8
 100%     75 (longest request)

go-silly-pi-benchmark.go

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
)

func visitor_counter() chan int {
    i := 1
    c := make(chan int)
    go func() {
        for {
            c <- i
            i++
        }
    }()
    return c
}

func webHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello World")
}

func main() {
    c := visitor_counter()
    http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello visitor #%d", <-c)
    })
    http.HandleFunc("/plain", webHandler)

    http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil)
}

node js benchmark results

pi@waripi ~ $ ab -n 1000 -n 10000 http://192.168.1.244:1337/
This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking 192.168.1.244 (be patient)
Completed 1000 requests
Completed 2000 requests
Completed 3000 requests
Completed 4000 requests
Completed 5000 requests
Completed 6000 requests
Completed 7000 requests
Completed 8000 requests
Completed 9000 requests
Completed 10000 requests
Finished 10000 requests


Server Software:        
Server Hostname:        192.168.1.244
Server Port:            1337

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        12 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   61.900 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      760000 bytes
HTML transferred:       120000 bytes
Requests per second:    161.55 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       6.190 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       6.190 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          11.99 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    1   0.1      1       3
Processing:     4    5   2.2      5     113
Waiting:        0    4   2.1      4     110
Total:          5    6   2.2      6     114

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      6
  66%      6
  75%      6
  80%      6
  90%      6
  95%      6
  98%      7
  99%     12
 100%    114 (longest request)

node-unfair-pi-benchmark.js

var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(1337, '0.0.0.0');

console.log('Server running at http://0.0.0.0:1337/');