Настроение:

amused

Optimized it a bit...

$ time ./symta.exe -e 'I 0; while I < 1000000000: ++I; say I'
1000000000
No
real    0m 11.70s
user    0m 1.96s
sys     0m 0.00s

If we believe the Anon at https://lj.rossia.org/users/nancygold/192317.html?thread=1546301#t1546301

it is 10 times slower than the compiled code, which I think is near the limit for the interpreted code.