>I don't know if there will someday be a language that is as easy to work in as a Python or Ruby for simpler programs but which lets you get (almost) as fast and fine-grained as C as your features stabilize and you start to optimize
Have you looked in to Cython? It seems like it tries to do what you wrote.
"The Cython language is a superset of the Python language that additionally supports calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes. This allows the compiler to generate very efficient C code from Cython code. The C code is generated once and then compiles with all major C/C++ compilers in CPython 2.4 and later, including Python 3.x. PyPy support is work in progress and is mostly usable in recent developer versions."
The latest Gevent dev uses libev (same as node.js) I'm curious to know how Cython and the new Gevent will perform vs the alternatives.
Have you looked in to Cython? It seems like it tries to do what you wrote.
From http://cython.org/
"The Cython language is a superset of the Python language that additionally supports calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes. This allows the compiler to generate very efficient C code from Cython code. The C code is generated once and then compiles with all major C/C++ compilers in CPython 2.4 and later, including Python 3.x. PyPy support is work in progress and is mostly usable in recent developer versions."
The latest Gevent dev uses libev (same as node.js) I'm curious to know how Cython and the new Gevent will perform vs the alternatives.