Fastest practical language

I know this is subjective so there is no one answer but I would like to hear your opinions anyway.

Which language has the fastest performance for most tasks while still being practical to write in?

(Stalin produces C code)
"numeric double integral, which was roughly 20x faster in
stalin than in tuned C or Fortran."(notice the replies)
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.lang.scheme/2007-12/msg00050.html



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