[mratsim]

JVM, CLR, Python bytecode or Lua JIT code are ultimately all transformed into machine code but those are not as fast as assembler.

Being as fast as C is not about using C as an intermediate language but having data structures and control flow that resemble what C compiler have been optimized for.

Case in point, Haskell GHC is capable of outputting C code but the algorithm will not get C performance (or Haskell performance without this intermediate C representation).