Python and performance can be summed up as "just think about what it has to do to add two ints together". The I/O requirements of that vastly exceed the CPU req

Python and performance can be summed up as "just think about what it has to do to add two ints together". The I/O requirements of that vastly exceed the CPU requirements. Basically any tight loop, heavy use of hash tables (so that's Python, Ruby etc.) or floating point (since this is a sore spot for ARM) is going to create an explosion in time used. C/C++/C#/Java can, by being careful about the types being used, be much faster.