If you've already worked out the algorithm, it will be difficult to improve upon C unless you write in assembly language. However, if you haven't, you'll be ab

If you've already worked out the algorithm, it will be difficult to improve upon C unless you write in assembly language. However, if you haven't, you'll be able to write and debug it a lot faster by writing it in Java, Python, Lisp, or some other high level language instead. Most, and larger, performance improvements are obtained through discovering better algorithms, and you'll find it easier, and have more time, if you write it in a high level language, because you won't have to worry about manual memory management, array overflows, and all the other problems you often run into when programming in C. So after development time constraints are taken into account, many programs in higher level languages will often run faster than equivalent C programs. The things that matter most are development and maintenance time, and response times, not overall run time. Compared to high level languages, C increases the first two and has little effect upon the third. Decades ago, people were happily using computers thousands of times slower.