It's a nitpicky argument; competent people understand the meaning. Languages have relative speeds on the same hardware if similar algorithms are developed by e

It's a nitpicky argument; competent people understand the meaning. Languages have relative speeds on the same hardware if similar algorithms are developed by experienced programmers. E.g. ML is hundreds of times faster than script languages on 4MHz CPUs. Of course when you get into 'nearly as fast' territory then all bets are off. And skilled optimizers can usually tip the scales.