What should i learns?

I am an optimization freak.
I've only used C and Assembly in my whole life (except the markup language HTML to make a silly webpage for myself.)
But now i have to design a website for someone i know, and i'll ask you anonymous, what should i learn?

Since i am an opt.freak i'd like my website to be ultra fast.
What should i use for a database? MySQL ? RoR ?
What is the fastest? PHP ? Perl or Ruby? something else? (coldfusion? lol)

in before haskell, lisp, forced indentation of the code, opera browser, too bad * is slow as fuck etc.

Try c#. It's a newer version of c++ and I beleive it's meant for making .net pages.