All of these numbers are based on what completely flawed microbenchmarks from a site that used to be called "The Language Shootout". The numbers have been thoroughly debunked several times in the past. See this thread, for example: http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t86371.html?start=30 Or just google for "language shootout". It's not that the people who run this are just incompetent (making dumb mistakes like including JVM startup times). It's that they actively allow and even encourage cheating. For example, at least one of the "C" benchmarks actually uses hand-coded assembly (libgmp), and rather than stick to the obvious "program must be written in the language it's listed under" rule, the site maintainer suggests that the "Java" benchmark could be changed to also use assembly. This is all documented in the thread listed above. After several of these debunkings over the years, they had to change the name from "the language shootout" to something else, as any quick google will show that these benchmarks are completely bogus. Nothing to see here, move along.

You've just taken what may be the most contorted, ambiguous, controversial half-sentence in the Bill or Rights, chopped off the weird part, and called the sentence simple.