[nossralf]

Well sure, adding "where execution time is factored" makes it hard to disagree with you. (And ultimately, it usually becomes a factor sooner or later.)

That wasn't the context in which I was writing my original reply, however. I was responding to a post that mentioned "magic" as a reason to disregard Ruby for competitions, which I didn't agree with. (The Ruby solution in the submission was slow even using a while loop, which is far from magic.)

If you're able to solve problems in the same amount of time using a fast and a not so fast language, of course you pick the faster one in a competition. I'm not arguing against that.