[hitechsites]

While one specific benchmark may not sway your decision on which programming language to use for your own projects, it should certainly be a factor when designing a large web application for hundreds of thousands of users. Unless of course you say that benchmarks are irrelevant and do not measure anything that corresponds to real world performance. But that would be like saying it does not matter whether you use a bicycle, a car, or a jet engine to travel from Point A to Point B, since intrinsic speed of your choice mode of transportation is difficult to measure, and is irrelevant.

[angusgr]

While one specific benchmark may not sway your decision on which programming language to use for your own projects, it should certainly be a factor when designing a large web application for hundreds of thousands of users.

Sure, but the benchmark has to fit the use case. If you're designing a large web application, find benchmarks for large web applications or write benchmark cases yourself that match the use cases you're going to see and think you need to optimise for.