Ocaml is really good for this, and is usually "fast enough" for most things. When you REALLY need speed, there is the oxcaml project by jane street that gets yo

Ocaml is really good for this, and is usually "fast enough" for most things. When you REALLY need speed, there is the oxcaml project by jane street that gets you all sorts of perf improvements and close to C speed, while still having a GC for things not critical for raw speed.