To some extent this is true. But built in datatypes that are performant are more likely to be used so thats an advantage some of the higher level languages have.
Truly optimized C code will be faster than perl/python/php. But given the same problem the perl/pyhton/php programs will tend to use hashed data types (dictionaries in python, arrays is php) and end up with fast code. Sometimes faster than C code because the writing/using hashing in C is more difficult and its not always used.
Truly optimized C code will be faster than perl/python/php. But given the same problem the perl/pyhton/php programs will tend to use hashed data types (dictionaries in python, arrays is php) and end up with fast code. Sometimes faster than C code because the writing/using hashing in C is more difficult and its not always used.