From a speed point of view: there are many aspects of it (for example: the average speed of a long running application, the startup speed of the application – which again can be subdivided in multiple cases – like the first time the splashscreen shows up, or until GUI becomes usable. Then we have the whole latency vs. throughput problem).

My end-point I wanted to make is that there are many ways to skin a cat (what a horrible metaphor btw!) and comparison like “X is N times faster than Y” are mostly academic. The right way (IMHO) is to set goals (ie. GUI delay less than 100ms) and then work towards that goal. Going beyond the goal has no benefit. If you think that the goal is not correctly set, modify it, but don’t optimize for the sake of optimization.

I’m anonymous, but i’m a regular reader 🙂

Python programs usually run great, stable (!!) and fast, Java apps are buggy, crash and are really slow. I suspect Java is ok because some folks like it (something works for you guys) but i never liked a Java app.