I’m getting somewhat peeved with the repetitive claims that C is so fast.
It isn’t. it never was. It’s just that the language is fairly transparent down to the machine level so when you change something in the C code, you can predict the effect on the compiled machine code.
That doesn’t make it fast, it only ingratiates the control-freak aspect of most programmers.
http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3098801908586746@naggum.no.html