That's not the real problem with the shootout scores. The problem is that in quest for optimization the code for many languages becomes very much non idiomatic

That's not the real problem with the shootout scores. The problem is that in quest for optimization the code for many languages becomes very much non idiomatic. Therefore the result does not accurately reflect real life performance, where writing idiomatic code outweighs the benefit of iterating on something to the nth degree in search of micro optimizations.