In Pike 7.8 calling call_out takes 0.002 ms. In Ubuntu's Pike v8.0 release 498 and in Opera's v8.0 release 610 it takes 2ms. Test program:
[…]
Is there a fix in younger version of Pike?
8.0.702 on macOS 10.14.6 :
Pike bertrand$ for i in `seq 10`; do ./test_callout.pike; done
took 0.006 ms
took 0.007 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.005 ms
took 0.006 ms
took 0.006 ms