I really like your comment, thanks.

I suppose the question that many people would like to ask, but it's hard to test is:

"Can we rank the speed of languages, given each are used by a domain expert to take full advantage of the features of that language"

or some such.

i.e. if a masterful C programmer and a masterful C++ programmer and a masterful Java Programmer and a masterful Ruby programmer all write something, which is faster.

I'm sure the answer is "it depends", because that's always the answer.