> If it's really important to gain performance, someone will do it.
Counter-examples:
I love Python, but it's slow. People thought performance in Python was important and ... well, here we are years later and no one has made Python performant. PyPy is a splendid display of engineering and optimization, but it doesn't make Python truly performant on real world applications versus C/C++. It's more of a stop-gap to delay the inevitable (which is, if you find yourself needing performance, you'll eventually have to bite the bullet and re-write in C++).
The same goes for JavaScript. Massive companies have brought their engineering might down upon JavaScript to build what are perhaps the most impressive optimizing compilers of our modern age. Yet JavaScript is still slow, and now what are we doing? Turning to asm.js and WebAssembly...
So while it's true that any language could be performant, given a sufficiently adept compiler, the real question is whether such a compiler is actually practical. And more importantly, should we pour the world's engineering resources into building such a compiler, when we could just build a better language instead?
Counter-examples:
I love Python, but it's slow. People thought performance in Python was important and ... well, here we are years later and no one has made Python performant. PyPy is a splendid display of engineering and optimization, but it doesn't make Python truly performant on real world applications versus C/C++. It's more of a stop-gap to delay the inevitable (which is, if you find yourself needing performance, you'll eventually have to bite the bullet and re-write in C++).
The same goes for JavaScript. Massive companies have brought their engineering might down upon JavaScript to build what are perhaps the most impressive optimizing compilers of our modern age. Yet JavaScript is still slow, and now what are we doing? Turning to asm.js and WebAssembly...
So while it's true that any language could be performant, given a sufficiently adept compiler, the real question is whether such a compiler is actually practical. And more importantly, should we pour the world's engineering resources into building such a compiler, when we could just build a better language instead?