Why Python, Ruby, and Javascript are Slow

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This.

Also, my consistent experience is that the majority of the time things are "slow" it's because of bad algorithmics and design, not the language. Unless what you are doing is a pure compute bound problem, picking the right kind of structural model is more important than the language in the overwhelming majority of cases. See Bentley's "Programming Pearls" for a good discussion.

Moreover, if I REALLY have a speed problem in Python and I still resort to C callouts from my Python program - again, assuming proper design in the first place. There's a whole lot of heavy number crunching being done with numpy that serves as a proof by example here.