At a crossroad

[bearophile]

dsimcha:

> Python and Ruby
> are constrained by their dynamic design such that they will likely always be slow
> and there is no room for improvement.

This is the opposite of the truth :-)
Being Python slow, there can be ways to speed it up. Being D fast, there's little room from improvement. See unladen swallow project, for example:
http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/
Or Just Psyco:
http://psyco.sourceforge.net/

Bye,
bearophile