> They have to do awkward backflips of syntax, use special knowledge of "smart" compilers and VM internals to get that performance, to the point that the simple expressive nature of the language is lost to strange optimizations that are version specific, and usually only stand up in micro-benchmarks.

...Huh, and the author thinks C doesn't? :)

(Well, except the VM part.)

"What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior" springs to mind: I believe it's been discussed several times in HN.