Faster is not always what we are after though. I recently wrote a piece of code to run in tightly constrained (but not embedded) environments, and C was the natural choice. The Python or PHP or JavaScript interpreter and VM just wouldn't fit in the RAM.
Sometimes you don't want to suck up all of the RAM on a non-embedded machine, either. Also faster startup times and no collector pauses. A lot of times those are required.
collector pauses brings up some discussions I've had with some friends - in essence, it's not something you want your platform to do when you're programming something like a game where you're pushing 60 frames a second + audio.
If you don't know what to look for you could end up looking for a long time.
