While you do have a valid point about using the right tool for the job, your comparison is not very useful in and of itself. Without seeing the code in question, as mentioned in the reply above, it's hard to tell whether the differences you are seeing are based on problems and inefficiencies with the language itself, or problems and inefficiencies with your code. And though I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt here, I would be shocked if there weren't a few changes to the Perl program that wouldn't result in a substantial increase in performance. That is not to say your effort was wasted, just that this may not necessarily be a valid comparison.