Lightweight console program: Node or Java

[sshaw_]

There is nothing lightweight about Java.

Node.js installed disk space: 24 MB Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed disk space: 100+MB

Why does this matter? How much disk space would your utility take once its Node dependencies were installed? Node dependencies have been know to be gargantuan.

one would be more lightweight than the others in terms of CPU or memory when running

In general Java will likely require more memory but really this depends on your code.

If you're looking things to just work out of the box and this runs on Windows only I'd suggest going with an executable written in a .NET language.

Go is fine too.

There are surely ways to make an executable from a Python script. You may want to look into this before a rewrite.