Comment by alcidesfonseca

I think the (hidden) reasoning is that it is really easy to have speedups with slow interpreters. However, getting speedups in high-performance level programs is quite hard, mainly due to micro-optimisations.

That's where the comparison to Python comes from: getting speedup on slow interpreters is not very _relevant_. Now if your interpreter has the same optimisations as Python (or v8 or JVM), even a small fraction of what you show would be impressive.

Having said this, the work your team did is a really challenging engineering feat (and with lot more potential). But I do not believe the current speedups will hold if the interpreter/compilers have the level of optimisation that exist in other languages. And while you do not claim it, people expect that.